O’Sullivan on Dotcom

Fran O’Sullivan writes:

It’s ridiculous that the New Zealand political system can be gamed by an international businessman with criminal convictions who bought his way into this country via the Investor Plus scheme. That businessman subsequently avoided extradition attempts. Then bankrolled a new political party to the tune of $3 million to “take down John Key” and is now openly colluding with Julian Assange to drop a political bomb just five days out from the election.

Kim Dotcom has long been resisting US Government attempts to extradite him to the United States to face allegations of racketeering and money-laundering over the use of his former file-hosting site Megaupload.

Now Dotcom’s palled up with the redoubtable Assange, who took refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to avoid extradition by the Swedish Government over alleged sexual offences.

Both men seem fairly unenthuiastic to actually turn up to a trial!

You can just imagine the phone calls between the pair.

“This is better than playing Call of Duty, Julian … You can take down a whole Government in this country, all you need is money and some politicians happy to go on the payroll.”

Dotcom has plenty of supporters who feel he was hard done by over the super-hyped raid on the Coatesville mansion. There are big issues still to be addressed.

But it’s notable that while he has flung more than $3 million into the Internet Party – even putting on the payroll a former Alliance Cabinet minister whose politics are vastly different from his – he won’t brook informed questions over what’s really gone on in the Coatesville sandpit when it comes to getting out his chequebook to buy political influence.

Thus he has tried to legally constrain his former bodyguard Wayne Tempero from speaking to media about the lead-up to the birth of the Internet Party.

This is remarkably thin-skinned. If Dotcom has nothing to hide, why would he be concerned about what Tempero has to say?

If he was just a businessman, it would be understandable. But we have the effective leader of a political party gagging former staff from speaking up. If you enter politics, then gagging people is a bad look.