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that, he's impossible to work with.’ And then you see them half an hour later going, ‘How you doing?’ It's insane! I'm shaking my head.”

The holiday saw the tycoon and family travel the Mediterranean. The super yachts hired were among the world's most luxurious. They spent time on the 82-metre Alfa Nero, which rents out at US$1 million a week, and the 115-metre-long Luna, owned by Roman Abramovich, which has an 18-metre swimming pool on deck. Dotcom said the joy was it allowed you to be “wherever you want to be, wherever the weather is the nicest — take your boat there and have a great villa with a swimming pool with you. You just jump on your jet ski and drive around and have a good time . . . it was just a nice holiday.”

It was, by most standards, an extraordinary holiday. Details of it are captured in receipts kept by designer Alex Mardikian, who travelled at least two months with the Dotcoms. The receipts appeared to be kept for record-keeping purposes on a thumb drive, later passed to the author for an unrelated purpose.

The receipts show four of the cars arriving in London on 21 May for work at Joe Macari Service, the high-end dealer and approved service centre for Ferrari and Maserati luxury vehicles. The Rolls-Royce Drophead Coupe — a three-tonne $600,000 spaceship of a car — was put in for work with the three Mercedes AMG CLK DTM, also brought from New Zealand. These latter three cars, with the number plates GOOD, AND, and EVIL, were the vehicles intended for the “race” at Nürburgring. Joe Macari Service also handled shipping the cars to Girona in Spain, where the Dotcoms had booked a house. While the cars were being worked on, receipts show the Dotcoms also rented the 60-metre motor yacht Yogi for a five-day cruise from Naples.

Receipts have them — or at least the Rolls-Royce — emerging again on 8 June at Cap D'Ail near Monaco. Then, on 20 June, they were at the Intercontinental in Cannes, where they also hosted Dotcom's long-time friend and colleague Finn Batato.

Then Paris — motorcycle escorts hired on 23 June to escort the Dotcoms into the city and for the next three days. They stayed at the Raffles, taking a number of rooms and suites for the family and entourage. One room alone — with food, laundry and other costs — was billed at €45,000 for the stay. Given Dotcom's later arrest for copyright violation, it is of interest he paid for “video on demand” in each of the rooms, giving instant access to movies through the hotel system. Then a chartered flight to Venice (€19,570) before Dubronivik and Zagreb in Croatia.

The holiday built up to the Formula 1 project, which required considerable planning. Receipts show members of the 27-strong group hired to film the “race” were put up at The Charles Hotel in Munich.

Dotcom's careful planning culminated on race day, 8 June at

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