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A Rotorua, New Zealand couple who fled the country after receiving millions of dollars in a banking error told a friend they were going on a holiday before disappearing.
Rotorua police and Interpol began an investigation yesterday into the disappearance of the money, thought to be $6 million.
It is believed they had applied to Westpac Bank for a $100,000 loan but an error by an employee mistakenly deposited $10M into their account.
Detective Senior Sergeant David Harvey of Rotorua CIB said police and Westpac were investigating the "inappropriate operation" of a Rotorua business account where money had been withdrawn.
Mr Harvey said the account holders had gone overseas and Interpol was working to find them.
He would not confirm how much money was missing but said some believed to be about $4m had been recovered.
The money's disappearance is believed to be connected to a Rotorua BP service station, part-owned by one of the missing couple, which went into receivership on May 8.
The unnamed couple, believed to be Korean Leo Gao and his Kiwi girlfriend Kara Young have not been seen since.
The service station traded as Barnett's BP and was registered in the Companies Register under Heights Services Ltd. The company directors are named as Hui Gao and Huan Di Zhang.
Leo Gao lived in a house close to the service station, with other family members. The unoccupied, furnished house has been for sale for $220,000 since October.
Helaine Aim, owner of neighbouring business St Andrews Bakery, said she was friends with the couple, who she referred to as Leo and Kara, and saw them daily.
She said she last saw them two weeks ago.
"I would go and have coffee with them at their house. They told me they were planning a holiday. I did not see them for a couple of days. I thought it was a little strange but didn't think much about it because I thought they were busy preparing for the holiday."
Mrs Aim said the couple told her they had applied for a loan to refurbish the service station which they were then going to sell.
Westpac's Craig Dowling could not say how the error occurred as the matter was under police investigation and subject to court action.
He declined to say if staff had been censured over the incident.
"I can say we've also been doing our own internal investigation and one of the outcomes ... has been to increase the checks and balances so it doesn't happen again."
The bank said a "substantial amount" of the money had been recovered, and it was "aggressively pursuing all avenues" to recover the rest.
Westpac had hired a private investigator, Mike Dingwall, to conduct inquiries, the New Zealand Herald said.
Mr Dingwall reportedly told staff of a nearby business he had proof Mr Gao had left the country and that records showed Ms Young had used his credit card in Auckland on May 6.
Chevi Lambert, manager of Andy's Cellar, said she understood Ms Young had not fled New Zealand and was with her mother in Blenheim, however police confirmed she had left the country and was still wanted by authorities.
Ms Young's mother, Suzanne Hurring, owns Michel Hair Dzine in the Queen Market Mall in Blenheim.
Citigroup said Friday, That it is splitting up into two businesses as it reported a fourth-quarter net loss of US$8.29 billion - its fifth straight quarterly loss.
In Citigroup's reorganization, one business, Citicorp, will focus on traditional banking, while the other, Citi Holdings, will hold the company's riskier assets.
The move will allow Citigroup to sell or spin off the Citi Holdings assets to raise cash. It also reveals the company's growing focus on back-to-basics lending and deposit-gathering, and dismantles the "financial supermarket" created a decade ago.
Some investors had been calling for a breakup of Citigroup for years, as the bank struggled to keep up with its Wall Street peers. Those calls grew louder as the mortgage crisis caused the company's troubles to mount.
There has been harsh blame for Citigroup's woes directed at the board, too - and the company said Friday it plans to get rid of more board members after the recent departure of long-time director and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.
"There has been one announced departure from the board. Together with other anticipated departures, this gives us the opportunity to reconstitute the board and we will do so as quickly as possible," said Richard Parsons, Citi's lead director, in a statement.
The New York-based bank's fourth-quarter loss amounted to $1.72 per share. Analysts expected a loss of $1.31 per share. While the per-share loss was higher than the consensus estimate, the total loss was smaller than the $10 billion many investors feared. For the year-ago fourth quarter, Citigroup had a net loss of $9.83 billion, or $1.99 per share.
For the latest quarter, Citigroup marked down $7.8 billion in securities and banking revenue, and $5.3 billion on the value of credit derivatives. It also lost $2.5 billion in private equity and equity investments, $2 billion in restructuring costs, and $6 billion to add to reserves.
The company's new structure is a reversal back to 1998, when John Reed's Citicorp merged in 1998 with Sandy Weill's financial services conglomerate Travelers Group.
The new Citicorp will include the retail bank; the corporate and investment bank; the private bank, which serves wealthy individuals; and global transaction services.
Citi Holdings will include Citi's asset management and consumer finance segments, including CitiMortgage and CitiFinancial. It will also be in charge of Citi's 49 per cent stake in the joint brokerage with Morgan Stanley, and the pool of about $300 billion in mortgages and other risky assets that the U.S. government agreed to backstop late last year.
Citigroup said it entered a definitive agreement on that deal with the government on Thursday. The government has already lent the bank $45 billion.
Merrill Lynch workers stand, applaud, say goodbye.
New York City investment bank Merrill Lynch has seen its last day.
As of Thursday the company will be part of the Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America Corp. At the closing bell on New Year's Eve on the fifth floor of the World Financial Center in Manhattan, Merrill Lynch & Co.'s employees held what's known as a clapoff: Hundreds of them stood and applauded solemnly to pay tribute to their company. Merrill Lynch lost billions of dollars in the subprime mortgage crisis. Some employees say Wednesday's clapoff was to mark the end of the company and the end of a very bad year. The clapoff is a tradition that was used when people left the firm or retired.
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