THE husband of a woman jailed for stealing almost £2m from the bank where she worked told a jury that he thought her employers were to blame for the crime.

Paul Rowlands said he thought the Dunbar Bank should not have put his wife Beryl in the position where she would be tempted to leave work with pockets stuffed with banknotes pilfered from the till.

Beryl, 58, was jailed last month for four-and-a-half years after pleading guilty to the theft of £1.775m over a ten year period, more than £1.5m of which was in cash.

The greying bespectacled woman would carry five figure sums on the train home from London before stashing the cash in her knicker drawer, the jury heard.

Her husband is on trial for three counts of handling stolen cash and six of dishonestly retaining wrongful credits relating to stolen money being used to pay off his credit cards by electronic transfer. He denies all nine charges.

Mrs Rowlands, who was brought to court from Eastwood Park prison in Gloucestershire where she is serving her sentence said she first stole just £200 from the till in 1989 to make a loan repayment to her employers.

But earlier her 45-year-old husband said under cross-examination by prosecutor Michael Hopmeier that he felt Dunbar Bank were equally to blame for his wife's crime.

He told the jury: "I believe the bank is at fault. It is the bank that gave her the loan in the first place that she couldn't repay.

"The bank should not have put a drawer of cash in front of her and let her take it. The should have taken more care of their employees. They should not put temptation in their way.

"As far as I know the only thing my wife did for the first five years is put her hand in the till and walk away with money."

He added "I partially blame the bank. My wife should not have done what she did but I partially hold the bank to blame.

"I would have thought a bank had a responsibility to look after its employees."

In the four years up to April 2000 the jury heard that Mr Rowlands spent £85,000 on his two credit cards, which were paid off with his wife's illicit transfers.

When the couple met he drove an Austin Montego and had a Yamaha 650 motorbike. But when he was arrested he had a £45,000 Mercedes-Benz, a Harley Davidson and a Honda 1100 superbike.

He also once spent £27,000 cash at TH White in Wootton Bassett to buy a Range Rover.

But as the former Royal Engineer's expensive lifestyle was put to him he told the jury "I didn't actually spend that much."

He claimed much of the credit card spending was carried out by his wife who didn't have her own cards so used his to order expen-sive items over the phone.

He told the jury that the couple kept their finances separate and that he had not examined bank statements and other documents relating to her accounts which were found in his desk.

Mr Rowlands insisted that they used so much cash because his wife had told him she had an off-shore account which she drew from in bank notes because if she paid it into a UK account she would pay higher level tax on the money.

He said "My wife brought the money home. I did not need to think where it came from. I did not think my wife was a bank robber, a bank thief."

Giving evidence in her husband's defence Mrs Rowlands said that she stole the money to buy affection but never told her husband about her secret for fear he would leave her.

Mr Rowland's brother Stephen, was called as a character witness and said he was an 'honest' man but Mrs Rowland's son from her previous marriage branded his step-father 'arrogant'.

He said: "Paul can come across as an arrogant man, sometimes quite difficult to talk to but once you get to know him or have known him for some time he can still come across as an arrogant man or difficult to talk to but I have never known him as dishonest."

Mr Rowlands, of Willow Cottage, Blunsdon Hill, denies three counts of handling and six of dishonestly retaining wrongful credits.

The case continues.