Best of the web: Sarkozy anti haven campaign hit by reports of Swiss contacts

Nicolas Sarkozy faced claims yesterday that in his previous job as a lawyer he often helped rich French clients to open tax-friendly bank accounts in Switzerland.

The Times reports the claims are likely to embarrass the French President, who has said that he wants to "put morality back into capitalism" and clamp down on international tax havens.

Sarkozy had threatened to walk out of the G20 summit this week unless it agreed to his proposals for radical reform of global financial regulation and what he calls "Anglo-Saxon" business practices. He told an audience in London that tax havens should be made more accountable and that "we want lists of financial centres that do not co-operate . . . and to draw the consequences of that". Full story...

Lord Myners, the minister in charge of the Government's clampdown on tax havens, has used a blind trust to invest £250,000 in an offshore shelter, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Details of the holdings showed he transferred 500,000 shares in the Ermitage hedge fund, based in Jersey, into a blind trust. Full story...

The billionaire financier Allen Stanford has flatly denied orchestrating an $8bn (£5.5bn) international fraud and has told the US courts that he has no money to hire a lawyer, The Guardian says.

In his first formal response to fraud charges laid by the US securities and exchange commission (SEC) in February, the cricket impresario complained that all of his assets had been seized by a court-appointed receiver, leaving him penniless.

Stanford said he was representing himself. He listed 80 paragraphs of charges by the SEC and, without giving details, said he denied each of the allegations. Full story...

Banks operating in Britain will be banned from using tax havens if they sign up to a draft code of practice drawn up by the government to address a row over their aggressive tax planning, reports The FT.

The draft, which also gives the tax authorities the final say over whether they consider a deal to be avoidance, is more radical than businesses expected when it was announced by Alistair Darling last month. But its stringency will add to widespread scepticism that banks will sign up to the voluntary code, fuelling suspicions that it is primarily a political damage limitation exercise. Full story...

In a move that appeared to be timed to coincide with pressure by President Nicolas Sarkozy for a G20 agreement on curbs for offshore tax havens, the French government has demanded tax fraud investigations into bank accounts allegedly held in Liechtenstein by Michelin, Total and Adidas, The Independent says.

President Sarkozy has been pushing for strong action to curb tax evasion at tomorrow's summit in London and the timing of yesterday's announcement - originally a leak to the French press - was almost certainly intended to prove that the French government is taking an equally tough line at home. Full story...

Switzerland's private banks have started to ban their top executives from travelling abroad, even to neighbouring France and Germany, because of fears they will be detained as part of a global crackdown on bank secrecy, reposrts The FT.

The head of one leading private bank in Geneva said the growing determination of countries such as the US and Germany to tackle tax evasion and secrecy meant banks felt they had to take extra measures to protect employees. Full story...