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soul-searching about whether the family had made the right move — and whether they should live elsewhere. “It was — do we really want to be here in New Zealand?”

But the return was also a welcome break from travelling. “The first week, I was really exhausted and sleeping a lot every day,” said Dotcom. “Coming back here was kind of nice — that was the first time I was looking forward to the laid-back New Zealand attitude. And it was good. I didn't want to do much. I just started playing Modern Warfare.”

The game required substantial bandwidth and Dotcom had fibre cable installed to push his speeds up. He had decided he wanted to be Number One on the international ranking charts, requiring a large amount of time and the fastest possible internet connection. The cable set-up was faster, but there were still inexplicable delays called “lag”.

“Lag” is a killer to online players. It delays reactions by a fraction of time, removing the instinctual element of play which is one of the advantages enjoyed by the very best. The lag problems were such that Dotcom had bespoke systems creation company Liquid Automation, and Gen-I technology services company carry out a series of diagnostics on the connection. It revealed unusual peaks and strange diversions of the signal as it was monitored when it left the property. It switched from a direct route to the communications hub at the Sky Tower in Auckland to a chain of communication which took a less direct route, needing five jumps before it went offshore. The speed of the connection also suffered delays. The signal had taken 30 milliseconds to make contact with the remote Modern Warfare 3 server in Australia, but it was now taking 80. The significance of the delay became apparent when the illegal spying intelligence agencies later emerged.

The delays were survived. Dotcom played Modern Warfare 3 constantly, bunkered away in a ground floor room at the far east end of the mansion. The room has five linked gaming consoles and big, comfortable chairs positioned in front of large 65-inch wide-screen televisions. Dotcom dedicated hours to the game, his online pseudonym of Megaracer rising up the rankings until it peaked at the top. Footage placed online shows Dotcom being showered in tinsel when he reaches first place, cheering and a large cake in the shape of the number “one”, iced in green camouflage with the word “Megaracer” down the centre. The video got two million views on YouTube in one week.

Dotcom was also working on plans to remove himself from Megaupload over the next three to five years. He had built contacts in the music business. He was in the process of appointing hip hop star Swizz Beatz (Kasseem David Dean), married to Alicia Keys, as chief executive and had hired a consultant to work on an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of shares on one or more stock exchanges. Megaupload's chief financial officer, Bonnie Lam, was handling the accounts.