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FBI agents were in Hong Kong, where local authorities were seizing accounts and entering the penthouse suite at the Hyatt. The FBI were in Australia, the Philippines and United Kingdom instantly, shutting down in moments a company that had taken seven years to build.

In Germany, in the small town where Dotcom’s mother lived, the police specialist anti-terrorist unit moved, blocking off roads around her home. Machinegun-toting officers banged on the door of the 70-year-old woman. “We are picking up this car and these items,” they told her, taking a Mercedes bought by her son, worth about €60,000. “To my mum! My 70-year-old mum,” Dotcom exclaimed. “She’s no threat, no nothing.”

The car was worth about €60,000, says Dotcom. “It wasn’t worth a lot,” he says. “The fact they went there and seized these things that are not even valuable . . . these guys were really worried I have even a single penny to defend myself.”

The same seizures began in New Zealand. The police moved in on Bram van der Kolk, at home in Orakei with wife Asia and their young boy, Xander. He had worked all night and, as the sun rose over Auckland, he sat having a drink to wind down before sleep while watching television. He sat up, startled by the sound of hammering at the front door. Answering it, he found three police officers — one reached in to take his iPhone out of his hand.

The gates to the Orakei property were opened and another 20 officers came in and stripped the house of anything which looked like computer equipment. Xander’s iPad was taken, as were other phones and devices. “Even the keyboards,” says van der Kolk, shaking his head. “They deprived us of everything — money, phones. Asia wasn’t even able to call my parents. You really get crippled the hard way.”

Across the city, bank accounts connected to the group or their business were frozen. In Coatesville, car transporters arrived and began removing the fleet of luxury vehicles owned by Dotcom. Simpson Grierson, Dotcom’s law firm, found its trust account frozen. Astonishingly, as the seizures were conducted, the criminal law team leader for the Crown Law Office, Madeleine Laracy, contacted Dotcom’s lawyers and told the firm that the court order which was being used to conduct the seizures was legally invalid. As would unfold in court in the days to come, the court order which should have been used would have forced the Crown to give Dotcom notice, and allowed him his day in court.

“Their plan was I don’t have a penny,” says Dotcom, “thinking my only hope to unlock any of that money would be to get on a plane and go (to the United States). Their plan was in five to six weeks we would just submit to the US jurisdiction, hop on a plane, fly there, they would lock us up and we would have to fight there [through the courts] to unlock funds for our defence.”

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