A Tauranga woman honoured by the Queen plans to appeal a court order to return more than $14million to a Maori land trust, her lawyer Dan Hughes says.
Rae Beverley Adlam was found by the Maori Land Court to have "committed a blatant breach of trust" by taking money for self-gain from the process of developing geothermal power stations on family land in Kawerau.
She was ordered to pay the Bath Trust (formerly the Savage Papakainga Land Trust) $11.2million from the sale of a geothermal power station and royalties received from Bay of Plenty Electricity of $2.4million.
She was also ordered to pay $823,000 in interest.