Bank makes £250,000 exchange rate blunder
The Bank of Ireland has frozen the Spanish account of a Dubliner after they accidentally gave him £250,000.
Bank officials obtained a court order in Spain freezing the assets of David Hickey after they gave him 300,000 euros instead of 300,000 pesetas.
Mr Hickey, who is on a "extended holiday" on the east coast resort of L'Ampolla, has refused to say whether he would give the money back.
Originally from Tallaght, 49-year-old Mr Hickey decided to explore the east coast of Spain before deciding whether to move there permanently.
When he closed down his Irish account last month, he asked them to transfer the balance into a Spanish bank, prompting the blunder. A Bank of Ireland investigator was sent out to Spain to track him down and Irish police visited his family home in Ireland.
Mr Hickey, meanwhile, had told Spanish police of the blunder and was astonished to find himself arrested and hauled before a judge.
He now has to report to police in Seville twice a month while it is decided how to proceed with the case.
When the blunder occurred last month, Mr Hickey said: "I probably should have given it back. That's all I have done wrong, a moral error. I was expecting about £1,500 and they had done the conversion and they had put the word euro before it instead of pesetas."
He said he was "sorely tempted" to keep the money, depending on the legal situation, but had made no final decision.
A Bank of Ireland spokesman said Mr Hickey had spent only a "small amount" of the unexpected windfall.
