Wanted fugitive Michael Hand, one of the names behind the failed Sydney-based Nugan Hand Bank, has been found alive in the United States.

Hand, a former CIA agent and co-founder of the bank, disappeared 35 years ago after the collapse of the bank – which owed more than $50 million – and apparent suicide of co-founder Frank Nugan, in 1980.

An investigation by 60 Minutes broadcast on Sunday night located Hand in the United States’ north-west, in Idaho Falls, a town of nearly 60,000 people.

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The 73-year-old was allegedly living under the name of Michael Jon Fuller when reporters approached him outside a chemist, but the man did not comment.

The report featured Australian author Peter Butt, who led reporters to Hand’s location after his own investigations for a book on the bank scandal.

“The fact that Hand has been allowed to live the free life in the United States suggests that he belongs to a protected series, most likely of the intelligence kind,” he said in an interview on the program.

“Indeed, an intelligence document I found places Michael Hand back working for the CIA in Central America 18 months after his disappearance.”

Nugan Hand Bank was founded in 1973 and expanded to a global company before its closure.

But 60 Minutes alleged the bank had been a funnel for “drug money”.

“It was more like a laundry for dirty money,” reporter Ross Coulthart said.

Although presumed dead, Hand was tracked down as his social security number matched the one he had been given before he disappeared.

The bank was allegedly instigated on a fraudulent claim it held $1 million in share capital.

Writer Alfred McCoy made the allegations in his 1991 book: The politics of heroin: CIA complicity in the global drug trade.

Three major investigations were launched between 1980 and 1985 into the bank after its collapse.

A subsequent royal commission found the bank had participated in money laundering, illegal tax avoidance schemes and numerous breaches of banking law.