Tycoon Found Murdered on Eve of Fraud Charges Hearing

The brother of a high-flying banker whose murder by poisoning shocked Hong Kong three years ago has been found dead, apparently also murdered, in his grand Connecticut home.

Andrew Kissel, 46, a property developer, had been due to appear in court today on charges of defrauding banks of $6.4m (£3.6m) - crimes for which he faced 20 years in prison. His lawyer said he had planned to plead guilty to those charges, and to separate claims that he cheated residents of a Manhattan apartment building out of a further $4m, which could have meant an additional 25 years in jail.

Kissel and his estranged wife had been in the process of moving into separate houses, and it was removal men arriving at their home in Greenwich, Connecticut, early on Monday morning who found his body with stab wounds. A manager for JB Moving Services told reporters that the tycoon's "hands were tied behind his back, his feet were tied, and there was some kind of bag over his head, or a pillowcase."

At the height of his success, Kissel owned a $3m yacht, several Porsches, and a Mercedes with a satellite television system. But his financial problems began to emerge around the same time as the death of his brother, Robert, poisoned then bludgeoned by his wife in a case that became known as the "milkshake murder". Nancy Kissel was found to have fed her millionaire husband a pink milkshake laced with sedatives, before beating him with a lead statuette, then tying up his body in a carpet and attempting to conceal bloodstained pieces of evidence. She had been a main beneficiary in his will.

Mrs Kissel said she had acted in self-defence after he threatened her with a baseball bat, but the Hong Kong jury found that she had killed her husband after he discovered she was having an affair with a TV repairman in Vermont, where she had gone to flee the Sars epidemic.

The court heard how Robert Kissel, who worked for the financial adviser Merrill Lynch, had hired a private detective to spy on his wife, confiding in him that he thought she was trying to poison him.

Police confirmed yesterday that they were treating Andrew Kissel's death as murder. A resident of the Manhattan apartment building involved in the case told the New York Daily News: "He stole our money, so obviously he was crooked. Still, I feel sad when anybody dies."

Andrew Kissel's lawyer, Philip Russell, said: "He was going to plead guilty. This was a white-collar case, and typically in white-collar cases, we don't see these type of tragic results."