New | Burglars nab HK$1.8m from two luxury houses
Two luxury houses in Repulse Bay and Sai Kung have been burgled and HK$1.85 million in cash and valuables stolen.
The two break-ins were discovered within three hours on Monday night when tenants returned home.
Police arrested two mainland visitors in connection with the raid the Repulse Bay house and recovered HK$250,000 in cash and jewellery after intercepting a taxi at a police road block.
The men, aged 32 and 37, are suspected to have raided the three-storey house at 110 Repulse Bay Road hours after they arrived Hong Kong from Guangdong, a police source said.
On Tuesday afternoon, the two mainlanders were being detained at Western police station for questioning and no charges had been laid.
Wong Tai Sin detectives are investigating the other break-in at the home of a German businessman in Sai Kung.
The Repulse Bay case came to light when the 37-year-old expatriate tenant returned home at about 9.30pm on Monday and found the house had been ransacked.
Officers set up road blocks in the area and mounted a search on a hill behind the house where burglary tools were found.
Shortly after 10pm, police intercepted a taxi at a road block at the junction of Repulse Bay Road and Belleview Drive, about 1.5km from the house.
Police arrested the two men after recovering HK$250,000 in cash and jewellery from them. The Western district crime squad is investigating whether they had been recruited by a burglary gang.
The house was purchased by the Carley company for HK$123.8 million in 2005, Land Registry records show. One of the company’s directors is Kwok Siu-ming, the chairman of Sa Sa International, the largest cosmetic retailer in the Asia-Pacific region.
Shortly after midnight on Tuesday, officers were called to a three-storey house in Chuk Kok Road, Sai Kung when a 54-year-old woman and her husband returned home and found their house had been ransacked.
Police said their foreign domestic helper was asleep in her bedroom in the basement and was undisturbed by the burglary on Monday night.
Cash and valuables valued at HK$1.6 million in cash and valuables was stolen from the second-floor cloakroom and master bedroom. Officers mounted a search but no one had been arrested last night.
Crime-squad officers are checking surveillance camera footage in an effort to identify the raiders.
There have been a series of burglaries in the city over the festive season. Five cases were reported on Christmas night, with losses ranging from HK$45,000 to HK$1.6 million in cash and valuables.
Police recorded 2,962 burglary reports in Hong Kong in the first 10 months of this year, down 16.4 per cent from 3,542 in the same period a year earlier.
