Fruitless Search For Pirates’ Treasure

Although it’s more than a year since the team behind The Pirate Bay was ordered to pay $6 million to various music and movie companies, it seems the debt collecting agency charged with recovering the money has got its hands on only $30,000.

The Pirate Bay defendants are appealing the case later this year, but the Swedish Enforcement Authority is still trying to carry out its remit to recover the money.

According to the Torrent Freak blog, which gives regular updates on file-sharing protocol, the enforcement authority is rapidly reaching the conclusion that the pirates don’t have any buried treasure – at least not on Swedish soil.

“We cannot find any assets where there are none,” Lars Grimby of the debt collecting agency told Swedish Radio.

Grimby did admit the main problem is that all the Pirate Bay associates have emigrated from Sweden, either before or right after the verdict.

Because the debt collector’s jurisdiction ends at the Swedish border, it is unable to seize any assets held abroad.

The other thing bothering the entertainment companies is that The Pirate Bay is still operating and it’s getting even busier.

It’s four years since 65 Swedish police officers raided The Pirate Bay HQ in Stockholm. While the entertainment industries may have hoped that would be the end of their troubles, Torrent Freak reckons that day’s events could easily be turned into “a Hollywood blockbuster.”

The blog says the Pirate Bay founders were already being watched by private investigators day and night, and the events leading up to the raid would make a bankable plot.