Mr. and Mrs. Lestrange had escaped from Azkaban several months ago.
But so far, they had yet to show themselves in public. Of course, perhaps they had killed anyone who had seen them. What was certain was that he had not appeared before any officials.
The Ministry of Magic had stationed personnel at many special locations as soon as they broke out. Although the response was not as large-scale as it had been when Sirius escaped, the Ministry was not doing nothing about the ten Death Eaters roaming free.
Gringotts was one of the places Ministry officials had been watching closely all along.
Gringotts was a goblin business, with premises in every country in the world where there were wizards. Usually, however, there was only one per country.
The United Kingdom's Gringotts was in London's Diagon Alley, so close to the Ministry of Magic that it was naturally going to draw attention.
But although relations between goblins and wizards were not bad at present, they were certainly not friendly either. Getting Gringotts to help watch for Death Eaters was therefore out of the question, and its business policy had always been to disregard its customers' identities.
Otherwise, the assets of several families, including the Blacks and the Lestranges, held at Gringotts would probably have been confiscated by the Ministry back when their heirs were imprisoned in Azkaban-the Ministry most certainly wanted very, very badly to do just that.
Although the Ministry could not pocket the money, it could wait to arrest anyone who came to withdraw it.
Recently, for instance, they had arranged for people to wait at Gringotts, hoping some of the escaped Death Eaters would come to withdraw money so they could arrest them.
Clearly, however, although the Death Eaters were a little mad, they were not stupid