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Source: Close Up -
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Police are still hunting for the Rotorua couple who were paid out $10 million after a banking blunder.
Leo Gao and Kara Hurring have been on the run for weeks after Gao applied for an $100,000 overdraft for his ailing BP station in Rotorua from Westpac bank and was instead granted $10 million.
Most of the money has been recovered, but the bank was still trying to recover $3.8 million, Westpac spokesman Craig Dowling said on Thursday.
He refused to comment on an application by The New Zealand Herald to review court action taken by Westpac to retrieve the money which was rejected by Justice Helen Winkelmann in the High Court in Auckland.
The bank has taken legal action against Gao, his mother Lei Gao; Gao's business partner Huan Di Zhang; Heights Services Ltd; and Wynn International Marketing, which owns casinos and hotels in Las Vegas and Macau.
Zhang and Gao operated the BP station in Rotorua under the firm Heights Services.
The bank's lawyer Simpson Grierson said in written submissions: "If this information is released at this stage to enable further media reporting, it is likely that this release would frustrate Westpac's attempts to recover the funds and also frustrate the investigations by the police and banks in various jurisdictions."
Police are seeking assistance from the Chinese government.
Detective Senior Sergeant David Harvey said a woman told police this week Kara Hurring was still in Hong Kong, but she did not know where Gao was.
The woman was not named by police, but was believed to be Kara Hurring's sister Aroha Hurring who had returned from Hong Kong.
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