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More than 10,000 Latvians rushed to withdraw money from their accounts after someone tweeted a rumour that Swedish bank Swedbank was teetering on the brink of financial collapse.

On Sunday thousands of savers queued to withdraw their money on hearing the rumours that cash machines in Sweden had been closed, and that Swedbank's operations had been shut down in Estonia. There were also rumours that Maris Mancinskis, Swedbank's chief executive had been arrested, which circulated on social media.

Mancinskis said that the rumours were absurd as the bank was operating as usual, and people could continue to access their money from the bank branches as normal.

According to the Latvian Commercial Bank Association, up to 24 million Lats (£29 million) had been withdrawn by Monday, which accounted for approximately 1.5 per cent of all deposits in the bank.

Last month the country's 10th largest bank was nationalised, leaving Latvians without access to their money for days, so there was already concern about the state of their banks.

As of September, the Latvian branch of Swedbank had assets of up to 3.8 billion Lats (£4.6 billion), which accounts for almost one fifth of the Latvia's banking assets.

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