Kim Dotcom might not be going to America but his money has already flown the coop. He is broke now, the United States will keep his money he will never see any of it back. He won't be able to pay for hosting, and because his servers are here in the United States the government won't let him have them back/turn them on.
"Kim Dotcom might not be going to America but his money has already flown the coop. He is broke now, the United States will keep his money he will never see any of it back."
If the seizure of his assets is deemed illegal by the court, must they not be returned? Potentially, along with compensation for the damages caused to infrastructure and reputation of Megaupload, not to mention the unnecessary force used with the raid of his house. After all this time and attention in media, such a sum would be enormous.
Under New Zealand law, courts must consider whether evidence was collected illegally when deciding if it admissible in court, but that doesn't automatically prevent evidence from being admissible. If the breach was minor, technical, and unintentional, and doesn't significantly affect the rights of the defendant beyond if the law had been followed, then the evidence is usually considered admissible. If the courts decide that the police deliberately broke the law, they are far more likely to rule evidence inadmissible.
So this does not necessarily mean that he has won the extradition hearing.
The actual ruling (here http://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/cases/dotcom-ors-v-attorney-ge...) was based on the argument by Kim Dotcom's lawyers that the search warrants were too vague and broad (they didn't say they were for alleged breaches of US law, they allowed too much stuff to be seized beyond the alleged offending, they didn't say how seized property that turned out to be irrelevant or was no longer needed for the investigation should be dealt with, and they didn't say how property belonging to employees living at Kim Dotcom's house would be handled) and the fact that the NZ Police had allowed evidence to be transferred overseas without permission from the Attorney General as required by law.
The court ruled that because the search warrants were too broad, they were invalid, and therefore the seizure was illegal.
Under New Zealand law, people generally get property that was seized for investigation back, unless there is a law specifically allowing it to be kept.
They didn't rule that all seized property must be returned yet, but the ruling grants "an order requiring that all items identified as containing no relevant material be returned forthwith to the plaintiffs" and "an order that complete clones of those seized items which are found to contain any relevant and non-privileged material be provided to the plaintiffs as soon as possible, and in any case, not later than the disclosable clone of that item is provided to the United States authorities".
Disclaimer: IANAL, this is not legal advice, it is a political discussion about seizure laws in relation to a high profile case.
The legal system is tricky. The US seized his money from all over the world not just NZ. Anything from NZ would likely be returned but everything else, the US will ask Kim Dotcom to come to the US to litigate it (if you want your money 'sue us'). He won't be able to do that, since he would then be open to be served properly and sent to jail again (unfairly I might add).
Because of the 1980's anti-drug seizure laws; No, they dont.
Technically, the US government can 'subpoena' a wad of cash, or all your property. And because the Bill of Rights only applies to people, they keep the stuff. End of story.
Actually it's more like because the "Bill of Rights" is an inanimate piece of paper that has no bearing on the present-day government. In fact, it does more harm by letting people think that USG is bound by logical rules. Run through its amendments and see how many could possibly be considered effectual. I count three.
