Police made the first arrests Thursday night after $1.93 million went missing on Christmas Eve when a money transport van owned by securities firm G4S spilled large bundles of bank notes over a busy road in Wan Chai, SCMP reported.
Two passengers—a 43-year-old man and a 36-year-old woman—in a taxi which passed by Gloucester Road on Wednesday were arrested in Kowloon City and Tseung Kwan O respectively as police announced around Friday midnight that a total of $730, 000 had been recovered after 30 persons surrendered the money they had picked up to police.
Will you offer us a hand? Every gift, regardless of size, fuels our future.
Your critical contribution enables us to maintain our independence from shareholders or wealthy owners, allowing us to keep up reporting without bias. It means we can continue to make Jewish Business News available to everyone.
You can support us for as little as $1 via PayPal at [email protected].
Thank you.
Some motorists and passers-by treated themselves to an early Christmas in Hong Kong after a cash transport van with a faulty rear gate spilled millions of HK dollars in bundles across a busy motorway in Hong Kong at lunchtime.
The male suspect is in the electronics recycling business, his partner is a cosmetologist. Police described them as “friends.”
“We found the money stored under the bed at their homes and they admitted they took the money on Gloucester after getting off the taxi they were in, ” said said police chief inspector Addy Li Chi-kin at a media briefing outside an industrial building on 20 Sheung Yuet Road in Kowloon Bay where the male suspect arrested.
The video shows it all.
The Bank of China (BOCHK), which hired G4S to deliver the bank notes, said in a statement on Thursday that the security service company had offered an apology and promised to pay for the losses.
“G4S has apologized for the incident and will hold liable to all the losses incurred based upon the contract engaged with BOCHK, ” the statement reads.
The bank said it had “constantly requested” the contractor to “put in place and effectively implement a set of stringent operational and control procedures.”
“Immediately following the incident, BOCHK has already urged G4S to investigate into the incident by identifying root causes and adopting prompt remediation to prevent further recurrence in the future.”
Despite the excesses of cash spilled, the van operated by three guards continued driving to G4S’s headquarters in Cheung Sha Wan, Kowloon, 14 kilometers way, until the incident was reported.
A picture taken by an SCMP photographer at the scene showed a single bundle of HK$500 notes wrapped in plastic, with a sticker on the side bearing the figure HK$500, 000 from the Bank of China (Hong Kong).
Armed police quickly arrived on the scene and cordoned off two lanes of Gloucester Road. The eyewitness said officers became angry as those collecting notes initially ignored their call to get out of the road, before the site was cordoned off.
Three boxes, which appeared to be containers used by security firms to transport large amounts of money, could be seen stacked up in the middle of the road being guarded by dozens of police, including armed officers. Representatives of the security firm G4S were also at the scene.
Sheeta Leung Hui-kwan, a spokeswoman for G4S Hong Kong, said: “We are still having an internal investigation and we found that something went wrong with the door on the left side.
“Our guards [conducted] the job according to the standard procedure but during the incident there were three guards in the van.”
I would question those guys…
