Dutch antipiracy group BREIN says it has found documents tying one of The Pirate Bay founders to the company listed as the owner of the Thepiratebay.org, Reservella.
According to a blog post by Peter Sunde Kolmissoppi, one of the founders of the BitTorrent search engine, BREIN has filed a complaint against The Pirate Bay founders, who include Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm. The Pirate Bay has been outlawed in the Netherlands.
During that hearing, BREIN produced documents, including a credit report, showing that Neij is listed as CEO of Reservella. Kolmissoppi denied that Neij is connected to Reservella, and he said the documents are phony.
"We were quite sure (Neij) did not have an offshore company set up," Kolmissoppi said. "And if he did, at least he would be smart enough to not be a director in it."
A representative of BREIN did not reply to an interview request.
The Pirate Bay founders have for years said the site was owned by Reservella, a company based in the Republic of Seychelles, off the coast of Africa. The entertainment industry alleged this spring that Reservella is controlled by the founders of The Pirate Bay.
This has been an eventful few weeks for The Pirate Bay. It has been hounded across Europe, as copyright owners have chased it from one Internet service provider to the next. The site has gone down for extended periods several times, with the most recent outage occurring on Monday.
Even after some fans have given the site up for dead, it comes right back. But there's no denying that film studios, TV networks, book publishers, music labels, and anyone else that objects to the file swapping that The Pirate Bay helps facilitate is ratcheting up the pressure on the three founders.
A year-long jail sentence and a US$3.6 million judgment is already hanging over their heads. Any ISP that provides bandwidth to The Pirate Bay faces legal challenges. And now the Dutch courts have The Pirate Bay in their crosshairs.
Kolmissoppi said he intends to file criminal charges against BREIN and some of its leaders for fraud.
This article was first published as a blog post on CNET News.
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