Foreign buyers to pay $3 mln over unlawful rural land purchases

Fri, 05 Jul 2019

By Paul McBeth July 5 (BusinessDesk) - Foreign buyers will end up in the red after agreeing to pay almost $3 million in penalties for purchasing rural land north of Auckland without Overseas Investment Office consent. The High Court yesterday ordered Chinese businessmen Zhongliang Hong and Xueli Ke, and IRL Investment and Grand Energetic Company to pay $2.95 million for breaching the Overseas Investment Act when they bought two properties in 2012 and 2014. They paid about $4.5 million for one of the sites and stood to gain $2.3 million w...

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