Bram van der Kolk (left) and Mathias Ortmann leaving the High Court at Auckland in June last year. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Bram van der Kolk (left) and Mathias Ortmann leaving the High Court at Auckland in June last year. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Former Megaupload executives Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk have been prohibited from managing or directing any companies for five years, MBIE says.
In June 2022, Ortmann and van der Kolk broke with Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom and pleaded guilty to money laundering, racketeering and copyright infringement.
Ina plea deal, the United States dropped its bid to extradite the pair, who would instead plead guilty in a New Zealand court to being part of a criminal group and causing loss by deception for their involvement in the illegal reproduction and distribution of copyrighted works.
In June 2023, Ortmann was sentenced to two years and seven months in prison and van der Kolk to two years and six months. [UPDATE: The pair were released in July 2024 after serving 13 months. All offenders sentenced to more than two years in prison become eligible for release after serving a third of their sentences.]
Their fraud and dishonesty convictions automatically triggered the five-year ban, confirmed today, on managing or directing any companies, which will run until June 15, 2028.
The early days of the Megaupload case - Bram Van der Kolk, Kim Dotcom, Mathias Ortmann and Finn Batato outside the High Court at Auckland in 2012.
“This prohibition protects the New Zealand public by ensuring that individuals with dishonesty convictions cannot be company directors,” said, Vanessa Cook, acting head of MBIE’s criminal proceeds integrity and enforcement team.
“As the former executives were part of global criminal enterprise that cost copyright holders billions of dollars, it was imperative for us to ensure they are prohibited from managing or being director of any company.”
Megaupload was alleged to have earned subscription and ad revenue from copyrighted content uploaded with permission, with none of the revenue shared with movie studios or record companies - or their artists.
The original charges followed a 2012 raid on Dotcom’s rented mansion in Coatesville, Auckland.
Dotcom continues to fight extradition to the US in the Court of Appeal.
The fourth accused, Finn Batato, had US charges against him dropped in 2021 after he developed terminal cancer. He died in June 2022.
Ortmann, van der Kolk and Batato collaborated with Dotcom on a successor to Megaupload before co-founding their own privacy-focused file-sharing service, Mega, in 2014. It remains in operation.
The Auckland-based Mega is owned by Virgin Islands-based Mega Services.
The Companies Office lists Mega’s directors as Stephen Hall, Sean Joyce and Shane Phillips, all based in Auckland.
Dotcom founded several ventures that did not gain traction, including crypto platform Bitcache, placed in liquidation after a High Court hearing in July last year.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
