THE GERMAN government has been offered a new set of confidential data on alleged tax evaders in Liechtenstein, a move likely to intensify pressure for an easing of bank secrecy in tax havens.

The finance ministry in Berlin confirmed yesterday that lawyers representing an informer had contacted a deputy finance minister on February 25th to discuss the data, which allegedly includes information on 2,300 bank accounts containing more than €4 billion.

"It is true that additional tax data has been offered to the finance ministry," a spokesman said.

He said the ministry referred the lawyers to Germany's specialist tax investigation authorities, but it was not clear last night whether an agreement had been reached to hand over the data.

The approach follows Germany's controversial decision, made public last month, to pay about €4.2 million to an informer for a disc containing data on thousands of alleged tax evaders in Germany and elsewhere.

Investigations based on the data, allegedly stolen from Liechtenstein's LGT Bank, led this week to calls by a majority of European Union finance ministers for a clampdown on European tax havens including Liechtenstein, Monaco and Andorra. Polish prosecutors said yesterday they would like to obtain from Germany data from the LGT probe relevant to their own investigations.

Prosecutors and tax investigators responsible for the LGT investigation said they had not been approached regarding the information. Bank officials in Liechtenstein have previously confirmed that they were familiar with the data, which was allegedly stolen from the Liechtensteinische Landesbank (LLB), the principality's second largest bank, five years ago.

According to German media reports, the lawyers who approached the finance ministry were working for Michael Freitag, a 48-year-old German who is in detention in Rostock, northern Germany, facing charges of blackmailing LLB.