A male non-resident worker (NRW) was arrested on Tuesday for embezzling HK$2.3 million in cash from his employer, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Chan Wun Man said during a special press conference yesterday.
According to Chan, the local female victim owning a barbecue restaurant entrusted the suspect, who started working as a busboy at the eatery last October, driving her car to take 2.15 million yuan in cash to a hotel guestroom in Cotai to be exchanged into HK$2.3 million with a currency dealer on Monday. The middle-aged victim then lost contact with the 26-year-old employee from the mainland surnamed Cheng, suspecting that he had embezzled her money.
The Judiciary Police received a report from the victim’s lawyer at about 2 a.m. on Tuesday, saying that as she had recently given birth, she was unable to go out, so she asked the suspect to assist her in withdrawing and exchanging the yuan into HK dollars, which she intended to use to buy a flat, reporting a loss of HK$2.3 million.
A PJ investigation showed that the suspect parked the victim’s car on a backstreet in Cotai in the evening of Tuesday and left the scene on foot, according to Chan, who noted that the Judiciary Police soon identified and arrested the suspect at a hotel in the city centre, while also recovering the victim’s car and HK$2 million hidden in the car’s compartment.
Under questioning, Chan said, the suspect told the police that after receiving the HK$2.3 million from the currency exchange dealer, he gambled away HK$300,000 out of the total in local casinos.
Cheng was transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, facing an abuse of trust charge involving a large amount, officially defined as exceeding 150,000 patacas.
Judiciary Police (PJ) officers escort the hooded mainland suspect to a PJ van outside the PJ headquarters in Zape after yesterday’s special press conference about the embezzlement case. – Photo: Yuki Lei
