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HELSINKI, Wednesday (Reuters) A man in Finland has refused to surrender to banking officials a potentially priceless faulty 20-euro banknote missing a security feature, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Local newspaper Lansi-Savo said the man from Mikkeli in southeastern Finland had received a 20-euro note which was lacking a pearl-coloured security thread when he withdrew 60 euros ($53.48) from an automatic teller machine (ATM).

But the man held on to the note because he thought it would be valuable to money collectors, the paper said.

"We have received this information, but the man...does not want to hand the note in for inspection," a spokeswoman at Finland's central bank told Reuters. "We will still try to get the note here to be checked."

The Bank of Finland said on Friday it had found some flawed 500-euro notes which were missing a hologram, another security feature of the new currency.

State-owned printing house Setec Oy acknowledged there had been a technical problem in attaching the holograms.

As news of the flawed notes spread, local media quoted money collectors as saying such notes would have significant value.

Setec Chief Executive Jyrki Lignell said he would not comment on the case of the 20-euro note before it was inspected by the central bank.

"We will not start guessing before we have seen the note," he said.

Finland and 11 other euro-zone countries introduced the euro notes and coins on January 1 in the world's biggest money exchange operation.

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