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Two New Zealanders have spent nine months on the run after being threatened with death if they didn't hand over $60 million they were paid for shares in an international treasure-hunting venture.
Gray and Juliet Clare, 40 and 47, of Hawke's Bay, were in January told that they and their family would be killed.
The threats were made by longtime Australian criminal Kell Walker, who skippered a ship loaded with guns to Vanuatu to confront the Clares, then living in Port Vila.
The threats came after interests represented by Gray Clare sold shares in a treasure hunt to a Japanese business for about $60 million.
Walker demanded the money - and the Clares have been on the run ever since. They move from country to country and never tell anyone where they are. They send mail home through third parties, and keep their whereabouts secret from family and friends.
"I'm just exhausted, physically and emotionally, right now," Juliet Clare said. "It's all-consuming ... it's all we deal with, this problem."
The Clares' lives were unravelled by Walker, who used investigators and lawyers to discover personal details about them. He built a dossier showing details of where the Hawke's Bay couple lived, what property they owned and who their friends and family were.
Surveillance photographs were taken and remote cameras installed that monitored the couple's home. Their phone records were also obtained.
Walker is serving a prison sentence in Vanuatu for making threats. He said he had been sent to Vanuatu by other parties wanting to recover money paid for shares in a salvage expedition run by world-renowned treasure hunter Michael Hatcher.
The expedition aimed to find four wrecks, including the Portuguese Flor De Lar Mar, which sank in the 16th century carrying an estimated $10 billion worth of treasure.
An inquiry by Auckland-based private investigation firm Paragon New Zealand has raised questions about Hatcher's role in the trip to Vanuatu. The inquiry, led by Paragon director Daniel Toresen and former detective Wayne Kiely, turned up evidence that Hatcher was pivotal in Walker going to Vanuatu. Hatcher confirmed he organised the trip - but said there was never any intention to threaten lives.
During the three-month investigation, Paragon found:
Confirmation that Walker was hired through an English-based researcher who works for Hatcher;
Indications that Hatcher oversaw the purchase and fit-out of the Retriever 1;
Documents showing the ship was crewed by some of the same people Hatcher uses for another of his ships;
Signed statements from Walker and Andrew Tatar, a struck-off Sydney lawyer on board Retriever 1, that Hatcher was behind the trip;
A contract taken to Vanuatu for the Clares to sign, handing over to a Japanese company the money they made selling shares in Hatcher's salvage operation. Hatcher had arranged for the company to fund his next salvage venture. The covering letter from Hatcher's lawyer was addressed to the salvage captain.
Hatcher told the Herald on Sunday he was responsible for organising the Vanuatu expedition but that Walker was never meant to make threats.
"I managed the whole project. I don't know why [Walker] went around threatening to kill. I played no part in wanting to kill anyone. It was never meant to get to what it did get to."
He said he was contracted to organise the trip by Japanese investors who had contributed money to an investment scheme which paid the Clares $60m for shares in a salvage operation.
Hatcher claimed the trip was meant to be an elaborate "con" on the Clares, with the idea of getting the $60m paid to the Japanese investors.
"We were out to scam them and that [the Vanuatu expedition] was part of it. It was a salvage scam. He was going to be shown cargo... He would have fallen for it.
"There was no law against us scamming Gray Clare - not in the middle of the Pacific."
Hatcher said Walker was meant to find out more information about the Clares and befriend them. The scam would have developed from there.
If successful, the intent was to pay the money to the Japanese - who were then meant to reinvest it with Hatcher, funding a new salvage operation, he said.
"The Japanese would like to get their US$40m. The Japanese are looking at any way they can to get their money back."
Hatcher confirmed that the contract taken to Vanuatu by Walker was his. He also confirmed that surveillance had been carried out at his instruction.
"We knew every phone number, every bank account, and everybody that had visited him."
On Thursday, Paul Davison QC presented some of the investigation findings to police in Auckland. An inquiry is now under way, with officers reviewing Paragon's findings.
Davison said: "That information provides a very compelling and sound view there has been a serious level of criminal activity...
"It warrants close examination and investigation by police. There has been a complaint to police."
