Update | Two arrested in Christmas Eve cash spill case in Hong Kong; HK$9 million still missing
Police made the first arrests on Thursday night after more than HK$15 million went missing on Christmas Eve after a money transport van owned by securities firm G4S spilled large bundles of cash over a busy road in Wan Chai.
Two passengers - a 43-year-old man and a 36-year-old woman - in a taxi that passed by Gloucester Road on Wednesday were arrested in Kowloon City and Tseung Kwan O respectively as police announced at around midnight on Friday that a total of HK$5.69 million had been recovered after 30 persons surrendered the banknotes to police.
The man is in the electronics recycling business while the woman is a cosmetologist. Both are said to be friends.
"We found the money stored under the bed at their homes and they admitted they took the money on Gloucester [Road] after getting off the taxi they were in," 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.
"During the mission police have found HK$165,000 in cash at the male suspect's home in Kowloon Bay. In-depth investigation is still under way in the female suspect's home Tseung Kwan O."
The two suspects were located after officers reviewed CCTV footage and the licence plates of vehicles present at the time of the incident.