The Rotorua man dubbed the "runaway millionaire" remains confident he will get bail despite being refused it by a Rotorua District Court judge, his lawyer says.
Leo Gao appeared before Judge James Weir in the Rotorua District Court on Monday when his lawyer, Ron Mansfield, applied for electronic bail, which was opposed by police.
Judge Weir reserved his decision until yesterday, refusing electronically monitored bail and suppressing his reasons.
Mr Mansfield has appealed against the decision not to grant bail and told The Daily Post Gao was incredibly disappointed that he had not got bail. However, Gao remained confident he would get bail under appeal, Mr Mansfield said.
A date for the appeal in the High Court at Rotorua is yet to be set, but Mr Mansfield said he hoped it would be within the next fortnight as Gao had already been in custody for a considerable period.
Gao, whose name appears on charge sheets as Hui Gao, faces 17 charges of theft of $6,782,000, including one joint charge with Kara Hurring, and 10 charges of money laundering.
The charges relate to offending alleged to have been committed between April 24 and May 5, 2009 in Rotorua, but mostly in Auckland.
Gao is accused of stealing amounts from $2000 to $500,000, and of laundering varying amounts of money from $361,663.65 to $500,000.
Gao had applied to Westpac for a $100,000 overdraft in 2009 but the bank accidentally loaded a $10 million overdraft on to his account.
When he realised the error he allegedly skipped the country with his partner, Hurring.
He is accused of transferring almost $6.8 million of Westpac's money into several accounts before fleeing the country.
Source: MSN