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An Auckland GP who was struck off the medical register last year after accepting $260,000 from an elderly couple in return for "free" medical care has been described by a High Court judge as reprehensible and ordered to pay the money back.
Donald Ian McDonald has been ordered to repay the money with interest.
In the High Court at Auckland Justice Paul Heath said McDonald's conduct was "reprehensible" and close to fraudulent.
McDonald was struck off the medical register after being found guilty by a disciplinary tribunal of professional misconduct breaching his position of trust and failing to give the couple an adequate standard of care.
Just before the High Court hearing, McDonald declared himself bankrupt, the Sunday News reported.
The judge said although the Bankruptcy Act meant all court proceedings were halted once a person was adjudicated bankrupt, the court could allow those that had already begun to continue.
Donald and Vivienne Blows were McDonald's patients in the late 1980s. Mrs Blows, 84, is now elderly and infirm. Her husband died in December 2006, aged 83.
Between 1998 and 2004 they advanced McDonald $260,000 and his former de facto partner, Aruna Lata Williams, a further $60,000 at his direction. Williams has repaid the $60,000.
- NZPA
