On April 17, 2009, the four Swedish men behind file-sharing hub The Pirate Bay (TPB)—Fredrik “tiamo” Neij, Peter “brokep” Sunde, Gottfrid “anakata” Svartholm Warg, and their original financial backer Carl Lundström—were found guilty of aiding copyright infringement. A Swedish trial court ordered them each to serve a year in prison and to pay a collective fine of 30 million Swedish kronor ($4.5 million).

They appealed the verdict. In 2010, a Swedish appellate court reduced their prison sentences to between four and ten months each; however, their collective fine was increased to 46 million Swedish kronor ($6.8 million).

They appealed again. In February 2012, the Swedish Supreme Court declined to hear the case, effectively ending the legal battle in Sweden, but the government had a tough time enforcing its judgment.

The case hasn't scuttled The Pirate Bay, which just celebrated its ninth anniversary. It hasn't put anyone inside a jail cell (though Lundström did do a few months of monitored house arrest). And it hasn't resulted in full payment of the judgment, which has now increased to 76 million Swedish kronor ($11 million) due to fines, fees, and accruing interest. It hasn't even kept the four inside Sweden—each of the men eventually left the country, with three of them moving outside the European Union altogether.

Still, Swedish authorities remain confident that the judgment—at least the jail time—will some day be served.

“As far as I know, everyone when I was a prosecutor has been forced to serve their time, sooner or later,” Håkan Roswall, the chief prosecutor in the Pirate Bay trial, told Ars. “I have no doubt whatsoever that every one of those four will serve their sentence."

Even if that's true, how did this fearsome foursome manage to evade the full force of the judgment against them for so long?

Carl Lundström

Carl Lundström is, in many ways, the odd duck of the group, although he provided a crucial role in birthing The Pirate Bay. When he was younger, Lundström inherited money from his father, who had founded a well-known Swedish crisp bread company called Wasabröd. In 1982, when the company was sold, Lundström received millions of Swedish kronor. He has since used that money to fund right-wing extremist political groups and has founded Rix Telecom/Port 80. That organization initially sold co-location space to PRQ—the company which hosted The Pirate Bay when the site was raided in 2006, and again just this week. (PRQ was founded by Neij and Svartholm Warg, although they no longer have any connection to the company). As the site took off, Lundström provided servers and bandwidth to get a piece of the action—which eventually led to him being named as a defendant in the Pirate Bay trial.

Peter Sunde told Ars that he and the other two defendants had essentially disassociated themselves from Lundström. “I have no connection with Lundström at all—we have very different political ideals, so we have nothing to talk about,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Also, he has no real connection to TPB, which makes me very annoyed that he's part of the whole case.” (None of the four responded to requests to speak about their own legal cases.)

After the trial, Lundström paid 233,000 Swedish kronor ($35,000)—a tiny fraction of the total amount owed. Earlier this year, the “Wasabröd millionaire” spent his four-month sentence under house arrest in the Swedish city of Göteborg while wearing an “electronic tag” and performing community service. He then left the country and now lives in Rapperswil, Switzerland, just southeast of Zurich.

In September 2012, the Swedish newspaper Ny Teknik (“New Technology”) reported (Google Translate) that Lundström had filed for personal bankruptcy in Switzerland.

The move has been greeted with at least some skepticism because of previous reporting that Lundström once attempted to hide 20 million kronor ($3 million) in a trust in Lichtenstein, one known as the “Tilbert Stiftung” (Tilbert Foundation). Lundström was eventually revealed as one of three Swedes involved with the 2008 Lichtenstein tax affair. As a result, Ny Teknik added, the Swedish Tax Agency forced him to pay a fine of nearly two million Swedish kronor ($300,000) in 2010.

Swiss authorities are set to complete a financial inventory on Lundström this fall. The local Swiss bankruptcy investigator in Rapperswil, Heiner Scheuble, told Ars that Lundström filed for bankruptcy back in May 2012. Scheuble declined on privacy grounds to answer questions about whether Lundström had assets in Switzerland or if his office had been contacted by Swedish authorities. He did tell Ny Teknik that it was within his mandate to determine if Lundström had hidden or removed any assets, but that so far he had not found any “indication” of financial evasion.

While Lundström paid at least a portion of the money owed and served his house arrest, he was an exception—the other three defendants have so far avoided doing either.

Fredrik Neij

While Lundström’s name pops up every so often in Swedish media, Fredrik Neij has been one of the more elusive characters in the Pirate Bay saga. A few years ago, Neij packed up for southeast Asia and set up shop in Laos. In the following two years, Neij met and married a Thai woman; the couple now has two children with a third on the way. Recent Facebook photos of Neij and his family indicate that he is still living in the region (his Facebook profile says his home is in Bangkok, the Thai capital).

While moving halfway across the world might seem like an obvious way for Niej to shirk his legal and financial obligations, Jonas Nilsson, Niej’s attorney back in Göteborg, told Ars recently that this isn't the case.

“He moved there before the court case started in Stockholm, so he didn’t try to get away from his responsibilities as fast as he could,” he said. When asked why Neij has not returned to Sweden to serve his time and pay his fine, Nilsson did not know. “I can’t answer that question,” he said. “That’s a question for Mr. Neij.” Attempts to reach Neij by e-mail, Facebook, and through Nilsson all went unanswered.

In June 2012, Nilsson filed an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, France on behalf of both Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde. Nilsson argued that under the European Convention on Human Rights, his clients' right to freedom of expression under Article 10 had been violated by the Pirate Bay judgment. “Just spreading information cannot be a crime,” Nilsson said.

“Everyone has the right to freedom of expression,” Article 10 states. “This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.” That same article includes this caveat, however: “The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions, or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society…”

Regardless of what happens in the case, the ECHR does not have the power to overturn the decisions of any EU member state. The final Pirate Bay ruling, as decided by the Swedish appeals court, will stand no matter what. So what’s the point of sending an appeal to Strasbourg?

The hope, Nilsson explained, is that if the court agrees to hear the case and if it rules in his clients' favor, then a formal rebuke might be filed against Sweden, which might also include financial damages payable to his client. Such a rebuke, Nilsson hopes, could pave the way for an entirely new trial.

“It could be that we can attack the Swedish verdict, and through another system, get another verdict, but not change the old verdict,” he said.

The chances of this happening are remote, but Nilsson remains hopeful. “I am an optimist. We think the court will take up the case,” he said. “Hopefully [we will know] before the end of next year, but that isn’t sure.”

In the meantime, the Swedish government is stepping up its pressure on Neij. Last month, Swedish media reported (Google Translate) that Neij had submitted a document dated August 6, 2012 to the Swedish Embassy in Bangkok, protesting the revocation of his passport, something the Swedish government seems to have done earlier in the year. The Swedish Embassy in Thailand did not respond to our request for additional information.

“We have appealed the decision to take back his passport, [but] we don’t have a final decision yet,” Nilsson told me.

Nilsson and Neij have argued that the criminal sentence is not serious enough to merit the revocation of Neij's passport, and they say he needs to be at his wife’s side for the birth of their third child.

“The children were born in the hospital on the Thai side of the border, where since birth they have received all necessary medical treatment,” Neij wrote in his appeal. “The reasons for this are primarily dictated by the standard of care and hygiene. As a result the family needs to occasionally cross the border for medical care and as a result of the pregnancy.”

As Neij tries to retain his passport and rope the ECHR into his case, rightsholders have continued their own attempts to collect cash from him. Swedish movie studio Yellow Bird recently tried to have Neij declared bankrupt. That would put all of his remaining finances in a trusteeship—some or all of which could be paid out to Yellow Bird—and Neij would be barred from starting any new businesses in Sweden.

Monique Wadsted, a Swedish copyright attorney representing Yellow Bird, said she had done all that she could do in attempting to seize Neij’s remaining assets, but now it was up to the government. “I really don’t know [if this money can be recovered],” she told Ars. “We will see. It's up to the Swedish Enforcement Agency to handle this.”

The Swedish Enforcement Authority enforces civil and criminal judgements by collecting debts, but the agency isn't equipped to find and seize assets outside of Sweden. Once a judgement has been made, a creditor must apply directly to the agency with a monetary amount due and a deadline. However, there's one major loophole.

"When it comes to your question about the Swedish Enforcement Authority’s possibility to collect assets outside Sweden, it’s almost impossible concerning private claims," wrote Henrik Branstad, of the Swedish Enforcement Administration, in an e-mail to Ars. “There are some agreements among the countries in the European Union, but outside Europe we have no authority—so if a creditor has a claim and suspects that the debtor has assets in another country, the creditor has to turn to a law firm or an international debt collecting agency."

Neij continues to insist he has no money to take. In a comment given last month to TorrentFreak, Neij quipped, “It doesn’t really matter what they do, I still have no assets they can take.”

Listing image by Aurich Lawson