The case against a foreign national accused of possessing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of criminal proceeds in his hotel safe has been dismissed.

Yeshayahu Baruch Zirkind, 25, was originally charged with knowingly possessing $826,000 in ill-gotten gains on March 12. However, the criminal charges against Mr Zirkhind were dismissed after a preliminary hearing before Magistrate Archibald Warner last year.

The cash that was seized by police is now the subject of an ongoing civil court case.

The 25-year-old originally appeared at Magistrates’ Court in March of last year when the court heard that the money, the majority of which was in Bermudian currency, was seized from a safe in the Fairmont Southampton along with several mobile phones. Mr Zirkind, who is of Israeli-American descent but resides in the People’s Republic of China, had arrived in Bermuda a week before his arrest.