Külföldi torrent oldalak Kim Dotcom Appeals Us Seizure Of His Millions, Jet Skis, And More

Kim Dotcom and his co-defendants have filed an appeal to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that the long list of property that was seized under American civil forfeiture was done so improperly.

Last month, a New Zealand court found in favor of the Megaupload founder’s attempt to halt the American government forfeiture of his New Zealand-held assets.

The decision by the High Court of New Zealand, Auckland Registry essentially found that because Dotcom lost the United States civil forfeiture case by default judgment in March 2015—and New Zealand law did not recognize such a concept—that his assets should not be handed over. In recent months, the American government has tried to work with its New Zealand counterparts to have this forfeiture enforced.

“Fugitive disentitlement” posits that if a defendant has fled the country to evade prosecution, he or she cannot make a claim to the assets that the government wants to seize under civil forfeiture. But as the Dotcom legal team claims, the US cannot use its legal system to seize assets abroad, nor can Dotcom be considered a fugitive if he has never set foot in the United States.

“The [Department of Justice] in our view is trying to abuse the Fugitive Disentitlement Doctrine by modifying it into an offensive weapon of asset forfeiture to punish those who fight extradition under lawful treaties, and a provocation for international discord,” Dotcom’s chief global counsel, Ira Rothken, wrote in a Wednesday statement. “Today we ask the Court of Appeals for justice.”

As Dotcom’s lawyers write in the appeal:

For starters, this Court’s precedent makes control over the defendant property a prerequisite to exercising in rem jurisdiction, and the district court lacked control over this foreign property. Further, the Claimants are foreign citizens and residents who would not be in the United States regardless of the criminal case. Yet, relying on both a misreading of §2466’s intent requirement and an improper assessment of an undeveloped evidentiary record, the court held that Claimants’ intent necessarily was “to avoid prosecution.” Finally, even if these hurdles could be overcome, allowing the government to seize Claimants’ property without an adversarial hearing would be unconstitutional. Claimants have been convicted of no crime; they are asserting established procedural and substantive rights abroad; and the government has never proved that their property should be forfeited.

In the US civil forfeiture case, which was brought 18 months after the initial criminal charges brought against Dotcom and Megaupload, prosecutors sought to seize an extensive list of seized assets, including millions of dollars in various seized bank accounts in Hong Kong and New Zealand, multiple cars, four jet skis, the Dotcom mansion, several luxury cars, two 108-inch TVs, three 82-inch TVs, a $10,000 watch, and a photograph by Olaf Mueller worth over $100,000.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...skis-and-more/