Page 3 Profile: Kim Dotcom, internet entrepreneur

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Who.com?

Kim Dotcom. He’s the 23 stone, 6ft 7in and multimillionaire founder of the now defunct file-sharing site Megaupload. He has been fighting the US’s attempts to extradite him on charges of copyright infringement. It is claimed he has cost the music industry $500m.

/AndNowWhat?

He has announced plans to set up a political party in New Zealand, where he has lived since 2010 since being granted residency on a visa that stipulated he would invest $10m in the country’s economy.

#FutureWorldLeader!!!

Possibly. The unnamed party is set to be launched on 20 January 2014, two years to the day that police raided his home in relation to the copyright charges. On Sunday, he tweeted “WOW! I’m getting so many encouraging messages about my plans for a new political party.” But John Key, the New Zealand Prime Minister, immediately dismissed Dotcom’s political plans as a “stunt”, suggesting he name his organisation the “no-hope” party.

*breathes a sigh of relief*

We’re not sure he’d fit in at the G20. As a teenager, he gained renown in hacking circles when he claimed to have bypassed the security of Nasa, the Pentagon and Citibank. When he was arrested in 2002 in relation to an insider trading investigation, he allegedly threatened to kill himself, then announced on his website he was to be referred to from then on as “His Royal Highness King Kimble the First, Ruler of the Kimpire”.

<b>checkered past</b>

When he’s not getting in trouble with the law, it seems Dotcom is spending money and playing computer games. He’s lived in the most expensive house in Auckland and owned at least 18 luxury cars, including a 1959 pink Cadillac. And before his arrest, he was ranked the world’s number one on computer game Modern Warfare 3, out of more than 15 million players.