Canada freezes C$2.3 billion in Gaddafi assets (Reuters)

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada has frozen C$2.3 billion ($2.4 billion) worth of assets belonging to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, a government official told Reuters on Tuesday.

The official did not give details.

Ottawa announced a clampdown on doing business with Libyan institutions on Sunday and later said it had blocked unspecified financial dealings the Libyan government had planned to carry out in Canada.

The United States, Austria and Britain have also frozen Gaddafi assets over the last few days.

($1=$0.97 Canadian)

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; editing by Rob Wilson)

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German bank WestLB to 'offload' third of assets (AFP)

FRANKFURT (AFP) – The regional German bank WestLB said Wednesday that Germany's government had submitted a restructuring plan to the European Commission that included cutting a third of its assets by 2015.

These cuts come on top of a 2008 plan that already involved reducing its assets by half, the bank said.

The new proposals also included plans to ease the purchase or transfer of its assets by putting risky holdings such as bad loans in a "bad bank" to be disposed of later when conditions are more favourable.

The bank would split its activities into four parts, some of which could be taken up by savings banks while others were sold to investors, said the bank.

These steps would incur new charges, which would be passed on to shareholders and regional and federal authorities, the statement said.

It did not say how much those charges would be.

Deputy finance minister Steffen Kampeter said they had put three options to the European Commission and that it was now up to it to respond, Dow Jones Newswires reported.

The owners of WestLB -- regional savings banks and the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia -- had until Tuesday to submit with the federal government a plan to restructure the bank to the European Commission.

They were also expected to propose candidates who were ready to take it over. Media reports have identified interested buyers as the US investment funds Apollo, JC Flowers and Lone Star.

WestLB got into trouble through risky investments in the US real estate market that went sour in 2007, and has depended on state aid since then to stay in business.

The EU Commission approved the aid but demanded the bank be restructured and either made viable or sold off.

It called for more efforts from the bank in return for the 3.4 billion euros ($4.6 billion) in public aid it had obtained to set up the "bad bank" facility into which the group has already dumped 77 billion euros of toxic assets.

If Brussels is not convinced by efforts to turn WestLB around, the Commission could order that it be dismantled.

EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia estimated earlier this month that WestLB had received a total of about 16 billion euros in aid from German taxpayers.

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Govt seeks international action on Mubarak assets (AFP)

LONDON (AFP) – A minister urged the international community Sunday to take "concerted" action to deal with any assets held abroad by ousted former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Pressure was growing at home on the government to freeze any of the ousted Egyptian leader's assets in the country after Switzerland did so on Friday.

Business Secretary Vince Cable warned that the 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.

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Swiss freeze possible Mubarak assets (Reuters)

ZURICH (Reuters) – Switzerland has frozen assets possibly belonging to Hosni Mubarak, who stepped down as president of Egypt Friday after 30 years of rule, a spokesman for the foreign ministry said.
"I can confirm that Switzerland has frozen possible assets of the former Egyptian president with immediate effect," spokesman Lars Knuchel said, declining to specify how much money was involved.
In recent years, Switzerland has worked hard to improve its image as a haven for ill-gotten assets and has also frozen assets belonging to Tunisia's former President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali as well as those of Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo.
(Reporting by Catherine Bosley and Oliver Hirt; editing by David Stamp)
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