£20k ‘stolen’ from victims of missing Malaysia jet

A BANK worker has been arrested after £20,000 was withdrawn from the accounts of four passengers on the stillmissing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. The female employee was suspended by HSBC i n Kuala Lumpur after the money was apparently siphoned off following the plane’s mysterious disappearance on March 8.

Malaysian police arrested her on Thursday, along with her husband.

Flight MH370 vanished over the Indian Ocean as it travelled from the Malaysian capital to Beijing.

No wreckage has been found and all 239 passengers and crew on board are presumed dead.

Police chief Izany Abdul Ghani, of the City Commercial Crime Investigation Department in Kuala Lumpur,

‘We apologise to the families’

said the woman had worked for the bank for ten years. He told Malaysian newspaper The Star: ‘Her husband, 33, was picked up by police at a workshop where he had taken his car for repair. Police believe that he is also involved in the siphoning of the money.

‘Police are yet to get the recording from a closed-circuit camera in the bank. It will take a little time.’

The couple are understood to have no previous criminal records.

The police chief also explained how the money was accessed, saying funds from the bank accounts of three passengers had been transferred into that of a fourth.

An internet transfer of £6,640 was then made in the beginning of July i nto a separate account which is ‘ believed to be that of one of the suspects’.

He revealed that from July 18, cash machine withdrawals of around £1,000 were made every day until the account was empty. Police are now trying to trace the suspect who opened the account.

Flight MH370 disappeared mysteriously after diverging f rom i ts planned route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Efforts to l ocate the aircraft have l asted f or more than f i ve months, making it one of the most expensive searches for a plane in aviation history.

Teams are still scanning a 23,000square- mile area i n the Indian Ocean, with a deep-water search planned for next month.

Satellite images have shown objects that could possibly be remnants of the plane, but none of these have been confirmed by searchers in the sea.

On July 17, around the time the money was being withdrawn from the accounts, 298 passengers died after another Malaysia Airlines plane – flight MH17 – was accidentally shot down over Ukraine by pro-Russia separatists.

Bosses are now considering rebranding the airline, in a desperate attempt to rescue its reputation f ollowing two major disasters within months.

Officials said they were looking at a number of options to restructure the business, which could include changing its name.

A spokesman for the bank said: ‘HSBC discovered and reported to the police a potential fraud on the accounts of f our passengers of MH370 by an employee.’

He said HSBC ‘ apologises to the families of our customers for the distress this will cause, and assures them there will be no losses on these accounts’. The spokesman added: ‘ The employee has been suspended from duties. The incident is now under investigation by the police.

‘HSBC takes the security of customer accounts very seriously and has taken the necessary action to ensure such an incident does not happen again.’