Kim Dotcom Evades Jail Once Again In Ongoing Battle with the US

The United States' latest attempt to put founder of file-sharing site Megaupload Kim Dotcom behind bars has fizzled — for the time being — after the New Zealand-based entrepreneur walked free from an Auckland court Monday.

The US Justice Department and FBI have accused Dotcom, whose real name is Kim Schmitz, of stealing "more than half a billion dollars" from copyright holders, including music and movie studios, with his cloud-based distribution site. Dotcom was arrested in 2012 and could be jailed for up to 88 years if found guilty of the multiple copyright, money laundering, and racketeering charges.

Ahead of Dotcom's extradition hearing scheduled for June 2015, authorities had attempted to revoke his bail, saying he was a flight risk and has breached his bail conditions by indirectly communicating with a Megaupload developer also being indicted by US authorities, according to NZ media.

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But an Auckland District Court judge on Monday found no evidence Dotcom, a German émigré, was planning to escape before the extradition hearing. The judge did tighten up the terms of his bail, banning Dotcom from any helicopter or sea travel that is not on public transport. Dotcom must also now check in twice weekly with a local police station as part of his new bail conditions.

Outside the courthouse after his hearing, Dotcom told reporters he was "probably the most compliant and exemplary candidate," and that he was "surprised, even though I'm going home right now, that my bail conditions have been tightened."

Dotcom also said the attempts to have his bail revoked was an "example of harassment and bullying" by US and NZ authorities, according to local media.

"The same thing that I've experienced in this bail hearing I've also experienced with the indictment, which is just as flawed and wrong and misleading and malicious as this bail proceeding was," he said.

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The attempt to revoke Dotcom's bail is the latest chapter in an ongoing saga for the well-known internet fugitive, who recently announced to a London tech conference he was "officially broke" after transferring all his assets to his family.

At the court hearing Monday, however, Dotcom revealed he had earned $40 million while he has been on bail, principally from the sale of shares in two new file-sharing ventures he has set up since Megaupload (established in 2005) was shut down, called Baboom and Mega NZ.

Earlier this year, Dotcom tried his hand at politics, founding the Internet Party, which aligned itself with the Maori-centered leftwing party the Mana Movement, ahead of New Zealand's September general elections. At the time, Dotcom expressed that his intent was to unseat Prime Minister John Key's National party, which the entrepreneur had claimed was working hand in hand with Hollywood top dogs to prosecute him. The Internet Mana party ultimately failed to meet the 5 percent threshold needed to obtain parliamentary seats, and Mana leader Hone Harawira was voted out of his northern Maori seat.

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