More than 18% of the Dotcom-founded cloud hosting service Mega was placed under restraining order by the local authorities. The actions of the police involve multi-millionaire William Yan, one of the largest shareholders of the service. The latter is alleged to be involved in money laundering, while Dotcom’s service itself is not suspected of any wrongdoing.

As you know, Kim Dotcom launched a new cloud storage service, Mega, despite facing an extradition to the US for his part in the so-called “MegaUpload Conspiracy”. As it turned out, now Mega is being indirectly linked to a crime ring by the police of New Zealand.

The service announced that one of its major shareholders William Yan is suspected of being involved into a large crime ring. Pending further investigation the local authorities has put the 18.8% share held through Yan’s companies under restraining order. In the meantime, William Yan has not been formally charged and denied any wrongdoing. As for the storage service, it isn’t believed to be connected to any of the alleged crimes.

Mega CEO Graham Gaylard was quick to comment on the news, saying that the action of the police wouldn’t affect any innocent third parties, including Mega, which have had business dealings with William Yan.

Kim Dotcom’s new service has been very diligent to ensure that all its operations are in full compliance with all legal and regulatory requirements. Dotcom himself confirmed that Yan was properly screened before becoming a shareholder. Dotcom, who himself remains accused of money laundering by the US, pointed out that no alarm bells went off at the time.

In the meantime, the industry observers say that the news comes at an unfortunate time for Mega, because the company is going to go public on the New Zealand stock exchange via a backdoor listing. But because of the restraining order, the trading in shares of the backdoor listing vehicle TRS has been temporarily halted.

Graham Gaylard is sure that the company won’t be affected by the problems of its shareholder. Mega’s CEO emphasized that all funds received by the storage portal were paid by Yan’s lawyers via banks operating under stringent anti money laundering policies. Therefore, Mega could not even suspect that such money resulted from any unauthorized activity, and the restraining order should not affect the operations of the company.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.