Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom's extradition to the United States has been cleared by New Zealand's second-highest court.
The German-born tech mogul this year asked the NZ Court of Appeal to overturn a decision approving his extradition but was on Thursday morning turned down.
The Megaupload founder and his three co-accused - Mathias Ortmann, Bran van der Kolk and Finn Botato - were arrested in 2012 in a dramatic police raid and charged with a series of copyright-related offences on behalf of authorities in the US over their roles in running the file-sharing website.
"An extradition hearing is not a trial on the merits, and the evidence relied on by the United States discloses a clear prima facie case to support the allegations that the appellants conspired to, and did, breach copyright wilfully and on a massive scale for commercial gain," the court said in a statement.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has led the case and claims Megaupload was a criminal conspiracy that earned the men $US175 million ($A237 million). If extradited and found guilty in the US, the quartet could face decades in jail.
