United kingdom Daily news: Megaupload's Kim DotCom says Joe Biden personally ordered 'illegal' shutdown of sharing site

Megaupload's Kim DotCom says Joe Biden personally ordered 'illegal' shutdown of sharing site

Kim DotCom says Joe Biden was personally involved in shutting down Megaupload
Warrants used in the seizure of property from Kim Dotcom's mansion near Auckland have been ruled illegal
Moves by the FBI to copy data from Dotcom's computer and take it offshore also ruled unlawful

By Eddie Wrenn

PUBLISHED: 10:31 EST, 4 July 2012 | UPDATED: 11:18 EST, 4 July 2012

The billionaire founder of Megaupload.com, which allowed users to swap large files across the internet before it was shut down on the orders of the FBI, said U.S. Vice President Joe Biden ordered the ultimately illegal raids on the company.

Kim DotCom, speaking to the website TorrentFreak, which follows the popular but legally-murky world of file sharing, said he believed Biden told attorney Neil MacBride to target the site.

Citing evidence on the White House website, DotCom says that in one meeting, Biden met with the head of the Motion Picture Association of America, which crusades against movie piracy, 'all studio bosses', and an extradition expert.

He alleged this meeting was to plot his arrest and to arrange Megaupload's demise.

Kim DotCom (right) accuses Joe Biden (right) of personally ordering the closure of file-sharing site Megaupload

Megaupload as it looked before the closure, alongside the FBI Anti-Piracy campaign

Seventy officers raided the New Zealand mansion of Dotcom - also known as Kim Schmitz - in January as part of an investigation of his website spearheaded by the FBI in the U.S.

DotCom was one of four men arrested during the operation, accused of being the ringleader of a group that netted $175million since 2005 by copying and distributing music, films and other copyrighted content without authorisation.

Dotcom's lawyers say the company simply offered online storage.

Many observers expressed surprise at the speed with which the US government acted against DotCom.

DotCom tweeted this image of Biden and Dodd, who is the head of the Motion Picture Association of America

But DotCom gave a potential explanation: 'I do know from a credible source that it was Joe Biden, the best friend of former Senator and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) boss Chris Dodd, who ordered his former lawyer and now state attorney Neil MacBride to take Mega down.

'After we received information from an insider we scanned the White House visitor logs for all meetings of Chris Dodd and studio bosses with Joe Biden and Obama. They are publicly available on the White House website.

'It is interesting that a man by the name of Mike Ellis of MPA Asia, an extradition expert and former superintendent of the Hong Kong police, was also at a meeting with Dodd, all studio bosses and Joe Biden.

'The same Mike Ellis met with the Minister of Justice Simon Power in New Zealand.'

Last week a New Zealand judge found the warrants used in the seizure of property from Dotcom's mansion near Auckland were illegal.

Justice Helen Winkelmann ruled that moves by the FBI to copy data from Dotcom's computer and take it offshore were also unlawful.

The TorrentFreak website lists those present at the White House meeting:

Barry Meyer â€" CEO Warner Bros Entertainment
Brad Grey â€" CEO Paramount Pictures
Michael Ellis -Managing Director MPA Asia Pacific
Chris Dodd â€" CEO MPAA
Jeff Blake â€" Vice Chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment
Ronald Meyer â€" President Universal Studios
Michael Oâ€™Leary â€" MPAA Senior Executive Vice President for Global Policy and External Affairs
Robert Regan - unknown
Rich Ross â€" Chairman of Walt Disney Studios at the time

Torrent Freak added: 'The information above does indeed suggest that the Megaupload case was discussed at the highest political levels last year.

'Noteworthy is also the MPAAâ€™s lobbying disclosure statement of last year which includes money spent on lobbying the office of Vice President Joe Biden.

'What e xactly Bidenâ€™s role has been, and whether thatâ€™s problematic, remains to be seen. However, Dotcom is convinced that corrupt elements in the U.S. Government brought Mega down. More on this will be made public in the near future.'

Dotcom said he had more evidence about the investigation, and added: 'At the appropriate time we will release what we know. The whole Mega case is quite the political thriller.'

Big operation: Seventy police raided Dotcom's mansion near Auckland in January

Dotcom is on bail in New Zealand, fighting attempts by U.S. authorities seeking to extradite him on charges of copyright theft and money laundering. An extradition hearing is set for August.

During the January raid, armed officers, backed by helicopters, cut Dotcom out of a safe room he had barricaded himself in within the sprawling country estate, reputedly New Zealand's most expensive home.

Millions of dollars in assets were seized or frozen, including almost 20 luxury vehicles, dozens of computers and art works.

Before it was shut down in January, Megaupload was one of the world's most popular websites, where millions of users stored data, either for free or by paying for premium service.

Authorities say Megaupload.com and related sites cheated copyright holders out of more than $500million.

U.S. lawyers for Megaupload have also argued that American federal authorities cannot charge the company with criminal behaviour because it is Hong Kong-based, and also that no papers have ever been formally served.

The company hosting the frozen data of millions of users of the file sharing site said their bill must be paid or they be allowed to delete the data.

Carpathia Hosting said it is using more than 1,100 servers to store the 25million gigabytes of the website's data - it has been inaccessible since the site was seized by the FBI.

The company filed an emergency motion in a U.S. federal court in Virginia seeking protection from the expense of hosting the data of up to 66million users.

The Virginia-based company said it is paying $9,000 (Â£5,700) a day to host the data, which works out to more than $500,000 (Â£316,600) since January.