Ms Ethna Tinney:

Well, under the rules of building society it is not permitted to trade your own money, or rather your depositors' money. In other words, you can't take a gamble. You can't decide you're going to take a gamble on currency or anything else or stocks and shares. And this particular individual did that. Now, as I said in my statement, it was supposed to be impossible because of the checks that went on. But it wasn't impossible and he did it. And he was a very smart guy and he wasn't doing it for himself. So it's hard to understand why he actually took the risk. Now, two of his colleagues knew what he had done but he managed to hide it for two years. And eventually they couldn't stick the notion that this was going on any more. He persuaded them that if he was given time, his position would come right and all would be well. So after two years they told his boss and that's how it came out. And one of the interesting things is, as well, that our auditors never spotted the hole in treasury.