“…The Government’s lawyers have been ordered to explain how the FBI left the country with evidence in the Kim Dotcom case meant to be kept in “secure custody” by New Zealand police.
High Court Chief Justice Helen Winkelmann has told the Attorney-General’s lawyer, Mike Ruffin, he has until Monday to explain why FBI agents were allowed to take 135 cloned computer and data storage devices to the United States.
At a legal challenge at the High Court in Auckland yesterday, Dotcom’s lawyer Paul Davison, QC, called the revelation “high-handed” at best and “at the worst misleading”.
Mr Davison said he asked for assurances in correspondence with Mr Ruffin’s predecessor, Anne Toohey, that no evidence would leave New Zealand shores unless on the back of a court decision.
Crown Law had told him it had “not happened and will not happen without prior warning”.
He said yesterday was the first time he was aware any material had left the country – and there had been an agreement to maintain the “status quo” over the evidence.
“There is no approval for the removal of these clones from New Zealand.
There has been an excess of authority.”
Mr Davison said the correspondence included a statement from the head of the police organised crime squad, Detective Inspector Grant Wormald -
- that the belongings were held in secure custody.
He said Dotcom’s rights had been “subverted or disregarded or worse”…”
(cont..)
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Govt lawyers red-faced after FBI spirits Dotcom evidence to US – National – NZ Herald News.
