it emerged he placed assets worth $640,000 in Bermuda trust accounts.

Geoffrey Robinson is under pressure to give a complete account of his financial affairs after he transferred the 380,000 into the International Trust Company of Bermuda.

Mr. Robinson, a multi-millionaire, is a minister in the Labour Government and a key adviser on UK tax policy.

And he has been accused of double standards by Opposition Conservative MPs after he announced a Government scheme penalising those with more than 50,000 savings last week.

Treasury bosses will quiz him over his financial affairs in the next few days after a Sunday Times investigation revealed he transferred the cash to Bermuda in April 1991 on the last day of the tax year.

The money came to the Island as a personal shareholding in his own family's 6.4 million property firm, Latchuser Ltd.

The company was wound up at a meeting in Bermuda in September, four months after Mr. Robinson became a Treasury minister in Tony Blair's Government.

Months after Mr. Robinson opened his Bermuda account, the old Conservative Government announced tough new restrictions on offshore trusts making it difficult for British residents to benefit from them.

Mr. Robinson has not been accused of wrong-doing but he has been exposed to fierce criticism by using offshore trusts for his own family and business affairs.

Wealthy Britons usually set up offshore trusts to avoid paying heavy capital gains or income taxes on interest in UK accounts.

But their access to offshore accounts is severely limited by financial laws aimed at stopping savers dodging tax.

Mr. Robinson first came under fire last week when UK newspapers revealed he was a discretionary beneficiary of a family trust in Guernsey, in the Channel Islands.

The trust holds shares worth 12.75 million in Mr. Robinson's engineering empire.

Sir Gordon Downey, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, has already said he will investigate whether Mr. Robinson's Guernsey trust should have been declared.

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