A BANKRUPT businessman who failed to disclose that he had nearly £250,000 in a Spanish bank was told yesterday that he faces a prison sentence.

Trevor Iveson, 48, from Middlesbrough, whose fruit and vegetable business collapsed in the 1990s, pleaded guilty to two offences under the Insolvency Act by failing to disclose in June 1999 that he had a bank account in the Banco Popular in Lloret de Mar and that he failed to deliver the content of £230,000 to the Official Receiver's Office, in Stockton.

John Lowe, defending, said that Iveson's business was lost through competition locally in the fruit and vegetable trade and that he had been unemployed for four years since.

Mr Lowe said: "He has been a hard working man and up until 1999 he had a good character."

Iveson, from The Grove, in Marton, who has a partner and five children, changed his not guilty plea yesterday at Teesside Crown Court when he was due to stand trial.

He was remanded on bail for pre-sentence reports with conditions that he did not travel abroad and that he lived at his Middlesbrough home. The judge Recorder Rachel Thornton warned him that he ought to expect a prison sentence in three weeks' time.