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anything you want, to go down this route.”

But the mansion wasn’t the answer for Bradley and wife Ruth. He worked like a demon and she stayed home. They separated, moving to Sydney, and the mansion went on the market, the impossible sale which found a regular tenant in Dotcom.

THE DOTCOMS MOVED into the mansion for a month in early 2010—the year in which Dotcom’s recorded earnings would peak at $40,784,000, according to internal accounting records intercepted by the FBI. “Let’s get this process started, and move here because we really like the house and we like New Zealand,” he said.

“If you lived in Hong Kong like me for many years, you start missing nature. You start missing green, you start missing fresh air. Also, Hong Kong has quite a humid, hot climate and you are constantly under air con. I wanted to have at least for a few months of the year a normal place where we could breathe normal air.”

For Dotcom, the family he and Mona had planned was a major factor in considering moving. “It was something I wanted to do for Mona because she had only seen the Philippines and Hong Kong prior to our trip here. I wanted to show her the world and show her around and to have a family together. We knew what we wanted. We wanted to have a big family. We wanted to travel the world. We knew we didn’t just want to be in one location. We wanted to be able to move wherever the weather is nicest. Hong Kong during the winter is nice and cool and here you have summer time.”

“All of our kids we did IVF, so we went to a doctor, they took her eggs and they took my stuff and put them together and we had eight embryos. We knew we wanted to use them. All of our kids are IVF babies. We knew we were going to have a big family and we wanted to be somewhere we can see that family grow in a nice beautiful environment. Hong Kong is just not a great place to bring up kids. We wanted a really nice environment for them, and Hong Kong just didn’t have what we wanted.”

Megaupload in 2010 was a massive business. It was the 14th most popular website in the world and traffic was growing. The company, with staff in the Philippines and operated from Hong Kong, was stable and new ideas were appealing to Dotcom. The prospect of moving didn’t affect the company. “My business was virtual. It doesn’t matter where I am. I never had a real office in Hong Kong so I would never

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