Britain seeking international action on Mubarak assets

Pressure is mounting on Britain’s government to freeze any of the ousted Egyptian leader's assets after Switzerland did so on Friday.

Business Secretary Vince Cable warned that his government would act against any British bank involved in helping Mubarak improperly move funds but said the British government would not act alone.

"I wasn't aware that he (Mubarak) had enormous assets here but there clearly needs to be concerted international action on this," Cable told the BBC.

"There is no point in one government acting in isolation but certainly we need to look at it. It depends also whether his funds were illegally obtained or improperly obtained."

Cable added that he would be "concerned if the banks had been engaged in anything improper" in relation to funds held by Mubarak, who stepped down on Friday after weeks of protests.

Junior foreign office minister Alistair Burt said the government could not take any action on its own unless it receives a formal request from Egypt.

"There has to be a request made for any of this action to take place," he told the BBC. "There are things that can be done, but so far there has not been a request made and therefore it is not possible to speculate."

The head of the Serious Fraud Office, Richard Alderman, indicated separately that the authorities were already tracking the assets of Mubarak and of former Tunisian strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was ousted last month.

"The public would expect us to be looking for some of this money if we became aware of it, and to try to repatriate it for the benefit of the people of those countries," Alderman told The Sunday Times.

Mark Malloch-Brown, the junior foreign office minister in the previous Labour government, said Britain should follow Switzerland's lead.

"I think it would be a very prudent thing to do to freeze suspicious accounts here because it will take a new government quite a while to mount some kind of legal claim on them," he said.

"It would be a real pity if when they did the money had gone. I think it would be great for the reputation for the City of London if those accounts were frozen now."

The Stop the War coalition announced plans for a press conference in parliament on Monday featuring Egyptian democracy campaigners to call for a freeze on assets held by the Mubarak in London.

Switzerland on Friday ordered a freeze on any assets belonging to Mubarak and his entourage, although it was not immediately clear if any such assets had been located in the country.

A similar freeze on Ben Ali's assets last month resulted in the blockage of a sum in the "two-digit millions" in Switzerland pending legal action for its recovery by Tunisian authorities, officials said.