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“There was all this effort to make sure that when we walked into the courtroom for our bail hearing that (Judge David) McNaughton would be so chilled about all the stuff that had been in the media about how bad we are that he would not give us bail.” It was a “property rights case”, said Dotcom. There was no violence and — he says — no weapons. The shotguns found were in gun cases, impossible to access and legal if only the gun stocks lying next to them had been fixed to the weapon.

McNaughton, when confronted with a bail decision, declared himself as the judge who had signed off the arrest and search warrants. Court records showed doing so would have seen him reading the police application — largely based on the FBI indictment — and a copy of the indictment itself. Neither the Crown (unsurprisingly) nor lawyers acting for the four accused men offered any objection.

It took a day’s hearings and the two days wait to find the application for bail had been declined. McNaughton had been told by the Crown Law Office, acting for the United States, the men were a flight risk. They passed a sealed envelope of secret evidence from the Customs department to Judge McNaughton, which apparently showed the “mechanics of organising travel to Australia or the Pacific Islands by small aeroplane, yacht or commercial vessel”. McNaughton also pointed to the shotguns found in the raid, Dotcom’s wealth ($26 million recovered from a range of bank accounts) and multiple passports found in the bag beside his bed as cause to keep him locked up.

The court was told the offending was “unprecedented and most serious”. Crown lawyer Anne Toohey underscored the seriousness of the case, if McNaughton had missed it. The estimated damage to the copyright holders was in excess of $500 million, she told the court, saying the damage had occurred over just two weeks, and was caused just by music files. If true, it was so much money it would have been larger than the entire recording industry was worth if taken over the course of a year. It was not a claim to be repeated later in the case.

Toohey said prosecutors in the US intended pushing for the maximum sentences to be handed down if a conviction was secured. In the lead charges of money laundering and racketeering, the maximum penalties were 20 years each. The sundry other charges added five years here and another 10 years there.

The bail decision was appealed to the High Court, where Justice Raynor Asher again declined bail. He pointed to Dotcom’s pattern of unorthodox behaviour and great wealth.

McNaughton said Dotcom’s wealth provided opportunity. He based this conclusion, in part, on the existence of a bank account which was not included in the original list of assets seized. The Rabobank account had $300,000 in it and was only discovered after the raid when it was

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