Bank error gives woman billions

Following an error at a Swedish bank, a woman was credited with a sum of money twice the size of the country's defence budget.

When Gun-Britt Marklund checked her account to see whether her monthly child allowance cheque had arrived, she found that the government had very kindly given her more than 93 billion kronor (£7bn).

The mother of three told Associated Press: "You never see amounts like this. I thought that this money doesn't belong to me, and that something must be wrong."

On Monday, she informed the ICA Bank of her inflated child allowance payment. A spokesman said that an employee had punched in a few too many zeros when making the payment from the social insurance office into her account.

Unfortunately for Marklund the transaction was cancelled and she lost not just the 93 billion kronor but the 15 million kronor (£900,000) in interest that had accrued over the three days before the error was detected.

The bank had the goodness to send her a bouquet of flowers along with its apologies. "We hope she'll be happy with that," the spokesman said. "But it is of course very difficult to find compensation on this level."