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THEY RETURNED TO New Zealand, traveling expensively and gradually by Rolls-Royce, yacht and private jet from Europe to the Middle East, Asia and eventually the Pacific.

The journey was tempered by good news and bad. The return to Hong Kong brought the couple back to their chosen fertility and medical professional, Dr Alexander Doo. Receipts show the Dotcoms sent him two iPhones as an offering of thanks — Mona was again pregnant, this time with twins.

But the Dotcoms also learned they were being barred by law from buying the New Zealand home in which they wanted to raise their family. It was a decision which, to Dotcom, seemed bizarre because the family had been allowed residency, and had believed being granted permission to live in a country would mean they would be able to buy the home they wanted. The mansion was grand, but it hardly embodied any special New Zealand character. Richard Bradley had built it with the grand houses of Cheshire, England, in his memory. Dotcom had been under the impression buying it would be a straightforward matter. At first, it seemed to be.

In their boss's support, a delegation of staff from the mansion made a pilgrimage to the nearby constituency office of Prime Minister John Key. The mansion lay inside the boundaries of his Helensville electorate, meaning Dotcom was a constituent. The mansion staff met with Key's electorate secretary, and asked that Dotcom's application to buy the mansion be approved. The mansion employed about 50 people, they said, and supported others who depended on it for their livelihood.

Aside from his staff, Dotcom had another supporter. Shortly before leaving for Europe, he had met again with Auckland's mayor John Banks, to whose mayoral campaign he had donated $50,000.

Banks's former colleague Maurice Williamson would have to approve the house purchase and Banks agreed to check on the progress of the application. He rang Dotcom in April to say the mansion was all but signed off, his inside knowledge matching the April 2011 date on which Lands' Minister Williamson did sign off his approval for the mansion sale to go ahead. Tempero recalled being told: “We're close to the finish line now. There is only one minister left to sign off approval.”

But approval to buy the mansion needed two signatures — the other was that of Justice Minister Simon Power. Not only did Power decline the application, but he went back to Williamson and had him reverse his approval too Now it was official — Dotcom's dream of owning the mansion was at an end.

Dotcom was furious. “Officially I am as clean as it gets,” he said at the time. “I am not a bad person with a bad character and, in my opinion, Simon Power is small-minded and unreasonable. In New Zealand, murderers have been released from prison within a decade.

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