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Parliament in November that year.

Some links are less overt. The Crown Law Office reports to New Zealand’s Attorney General Chris Finlayson, who met in Australia with US Attorney General Eric Holder on July 15 2011. The purpose of the meeting cut across most of the FBI’s interest in Megaupload — cyber crime, extradition and intelligence sharing. Finlayson says Dotcom was not discussed.

John Key completed the tangle. Between 18 and 23 July 2011, he was in the US to meet President Obama. On the way to the meeting, he dined with executives from Warner Bros — the studio producing The Hobbit — before meeting Obama in a warm Oval Office meeting on 22 July. Key told reporters he was there to “join others like the United States in making the world a safer place”.

On that same trip, Key met with the then-US Trade Representative Ron Kirk, whose office was co-ordinating a list of copyright infringers known as the Notorious Markets list. Kirk was also the US defender of copyright — with publicly stated appreciation from the MPAA’s Chris Dodd — and the Trans-Pacific Partners, a trade agreement including New Zealand and other countries on the Asia-Pacific rim. It was also the month Key reached out to Ian Fletcher, a high-flying public servant who had worked in Australia and the United Kingdom. Fletcher, who had no background in intelligence or the military, was hired by Key to run the GCSB, the agency which would go on to illegally spy on Dotcom.

Days after Key left, the MPAA was meeting Vice President Joe Biden. On July 27 2011, Biden met with his old friend Chris Dodd, the heads of Hollywood studios including Warner Bros and Walt Disney studios. Also at the meeting was Mike Ellis, the same MPAA executive to meet with Power a few months earlier. The MPAA would later say the meeting was to prepare for Biden’s upcoming China visit.

“It is interesting that a man by the name of Mike Ellis of MPA Asia, an extradition expert and former superintendent of the Hong Kong police, was also at a meeting with Dodd, all studio bosses and Joe Biden,” says Dotcom. “The same Mike Ellis met with the Minister of Justice, Simon Power, in New Zealand.”

THE CLAIM LATER by Key that he had not heard of Dotcom would come under scrutiny for the degree to which Dotcom’s business had permeated New Zealand’s bureaucracy. Key’s government was one which thrived on a “no surprises” rule. Civil servants were instructed to