U.S. authorities will have to wait until next year before they can get a hold on Megaupload owner Kim Dotcom following decision by a New Zealand court to postpone his extradition hearing for March next year.

Fairfax Media said on Tuesday that the delay of the hearing, which would have lasted three weeks, was agreed upon by Paul Davison QC, the lawyer representing Mr. Dotcom before the NZ court, and the Crown lawyers, who are pursing the case lodged by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) against the German internet mogul.

The pause in the litigation procedure, which was scheduled to commence next month but was tentatively reset for March 2013, was decided upon for the High Court to first resolve two judicial reviews that Mr Dotcom's camp had earlier filed.

According to William Akel, a member of Mr Dotcom's defence team, the High Court must first deal with the illegal search warrants and evidence disclosure issues that his high-profile client had called attention to.

"It was inevitable that the hearing for August was going to be vacated because we have two existing cases in the High Court," Mr Akel told Reuters on Tuesday.

He added though that Mr Dotcom, originally known as Kim Schmitz, has been wanting to put this controversy behind him and get on the hearing to conclude the matter as quick as possible.

His disappointment was shared by the defence counsels, Mr Akel said.

"You obviously want the extradition case to go ahead as soon as you can, but you have to put up with the inevitable," he stressed.

The flamboyant Mr Dotcom immediately took to Twitter in airing his disgust over the reschedule, pointing to alleged ploy by U.S. authorities to keep him and his business assets in limbo for several more months.

"Extradition hearing delayed till March. Dirty delay tactics by the US. They destroyed my business. Took all my assets. Time does the rest," Mr Dotcom said on his Twitter page.

The hearing delay came as the NZ High Court ruled recently that authorities who raided Mr Dotcom's mansion near Auckland earlier this year had employed invalid search warrants.

The same court also declared illegal the FBI's confiscation of hard drives owned by the Megaupload founder and ordered their return to Mr Dotcom, who claimed that information on the disks will be crucial for his legal defence.

Apart from his extradition case, the German national is looking on prospects to tussle it out with the U.S. government, which accuses him of piracy activities that led to collective losses of about $400 million suffered by American film and music producers and software companies.

Lawyers of Mr Dotcom, however, have been insistent that Megaupload only facilitated storage of digital files during its global operations and prior to its forced shutdown in January and their exchanges among global users were beyond the control of the file sharing company.

Lately, Mr Dotcom has attracted the support of prominent U.S. figures, among them controversial documentary director Michael Moore and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

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