Mona Dotcom in US Government’s Sites

/ Law Firms / / By
Mona

Mona Dotcom is the target of US attempts to access her husband Kim Dotcom’s assets with court papers filed in December that seek to define the extent of her marital property under a matrimonial property order that she is yet to seek in New Zealand.

Kim Dotcom’s millions have been frozen after his January 2012 arrest.  He and three co-accused are still awaiting extradition to the United States to face charges of copyright infringement, money laundering and racketeering in relation to the now-defunct Megaupload file sharing website.

In one thread of the long-running case, US authorities are seeking forfeiture of the seized assets – which include funds in bank accounts, vehicles and other valuables – but Mrs Dotcom says she has a 50 per cent marital interest in some of the property.

Action is now being taken in the US courts to have her claim thrown out based on her “lack of standing”.

In court documents filed at the end of December, US authorities argue that Mrs Dotcom’s interest can’t be quantified until she gets a New Zealand court order defining the extent of her marital property, and she hasn’t made any moves to get such an order.

Further, it’s argued that Mrs Dotcom has already received assets “far in excess of the claim which she seeks to assert in this litigation”.

Dotcom has taken to Twitter to hit out at the latest court action.

“Frustrated US DOJ prosecutors attack my estranged wife Mona, her assets & the future of our children. Don’t worry. She’ll respond,” he tweeted on Tuesday.

“What the US Govt is doing reminds me of what I learned in school about Nazi Germany. Ironic, Hollywood is run by mostly Jewish entrepreneurs,” he said in another tweet.

Kim and Mona Dotcom separated in September last year, but she continues to live in a property adjacent to Dotcom’s Coatesville mansion.

NZ City

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Destroying Diabetes and Weight – But the Insurers May Not Cover You

/ Law Firms / January 7, 2015 / By
Health cover

Losing weight and reducing diabetes risks is always a good new year resolution, however two-thirds of overweight adults in the US face difficulty receiving insurance coverage for new drugs like the anti-obesity drug Saxendra.

diabetes-destroyed-videoDiabetes Destroyed – Watch the video on reducing diabetes naturally – Click Here to Watch

In December, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new anti-obesity drug, Saxenda, the fourth prescription drug the agency has given the green light to fight obesity since 2012.

Tampa Bay Times reports that the health benefits of using anti-obesity drugs to lose weight—improvements in blood sugar and risk factors for heart disease, among other things—may not be immediately apparent.

“For things that are preventive in the long term, it makes plan sponsors think about their strategy,” says Dr. Steve Miller, the chief medical officer at Express Scripts, which manages the prescription drug benefits for thousands of companies. Companies with high turnover, for example, are less likely to cover the drugs, he says.

“Most health plans will cover things that have an immediate impact in that plan year,” Miller says.

Miller estimates that about a third of companies don’t cover anti-obesity drugs at all, a third cover all FDA-approved weight-loss drugs, and a third cover approved drugs, but with restrictions to limit their use. The Medicare prescription drug program specifically excludes coverage of anti-obesity drugs.

Part of the reluctance by Medicare and private insurers to cover weight-loss drugs stems from serious safety problems with diet drugs in the past, including the withdrawal in 1997 of fenfluramine, part of the fen-phen diet drug combination that was found to damage heart valves.

Back then, weight-loss drugs were often dismissed as cosmetic treatments. But as the link between obesity and increased risk for type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other serious medical problems has become clearer, prescription drugs are seen as having a role to play in addressing the obesity epidemic. Obesity accounts for 21 percent of annual medical costs in the United States, or $190 billion, according to a 2012 study published in theJournal of Health Economics.

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