Romney hounded on offshore accounts

Democrats launched co-ordinated attacks against Mitt Romney, intensifying calls for him to explain his offshore bank accounts and release several years of tax returns.

The offensive came as the presumptive Republican US presidential contender privately raised millions of dollars from New York’s elite yesterday.

The line of attack, described by Mr Romney’s spokesman as “unseemly and disgusting”, follows new reports that raise questions about his personal wealth, which could exceed $250m.

President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is expected to push the strategy throughout the coming week, underscoring its desire to portray Mr Romney as disconnected from the middle-class voters he needs to win the presidency.

“He’s the first and only candidate for the president of the United States with a Swiss bank account, with tax shelters, with tax avoidance schemes that involve so many foreign countries,” Senator Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said on CBS’ Face The Nation. He was one of several high-profile Democrats who spoke out on the Sunday morning TV news shows.

Mr Romney may have unintentionally helped the Obama campaign.

Republican donors driving Mercedes, Bentleys – and in one case a candy red 2013 Ferrari Spider – crowded into a series of closed-door Romney fund-raising events in the Hamptons, New York’s exclusive string of waterfront communities on Long Island’s South Shore.

Wall Street bankers and brokerage house chiefs, among others, make the area their weekend playground. Mr Romney’s Hamptons swing follows a week-long family break at his lakeside holiday home in New Hampshire.

Voters are split on whether they trust Mr Romney or Mr Obama more to run the US economy, but a majority says that Mr Obama better understands their concerns. The Hamptons crowd, however, saw things differently.

“I think he’s a plain talking guy,” said Peter Cohen, the former Shearson Lehman Brothers chief who now heads his own investment banking firm, as he chewed a cigar in his black Range Rover outside a Romney fund raiser expected to generate three million dollars.

Mr Romney’s day concluded at the Southampton estate of billionaire industrialist David Koch, where donors were asked to give 50,000 dollars per person or 75,000 per couple. The event attracted protesters including Robert Shainwald, a 65-year-old retired teacher.

“Romney has no idea what the working person’s daily concerns are. How could he?” Mr Shainwald said as he waved a sign offering free vegetables to anyone who was not a billionaire.

Mr Romney would be among the nation’s richest presidents if elected. He made his fortune at Bain Capital, a Boston-based private equity firm that has become a key point of contention in his White House bid.

However he has not drawn a regular pay cheque in more than a decade and has instead lived off a series of investments.

But he has refused to release more than two years of tax returns that would outline those investments, breaking from a precedent set by his father, former Michigan governor George Romney, who released 12 years of his tax returns when he sought the presidency a generation ago.

And an Associated Press report recently raised questions about a previously undisclosed Bermuda-based company included in Mr Romney’s portfolio until the day before he became Massachusetts governor in 2003.

Obama adviser Robert Gibbs said Mr Romney could easily clear up questions about his personal finances if he simply released “a series of years” of returns.

“Mitt Romney’s father was the pioneer for releasing a series of tax returns,” Mr Gibbs said on CNN’s State Of The Union programme.

“The best way to figure out if Mitt Romney is complying with American tax law is to have him release more of his tax returns.”

Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, considered to be a possible vice presidential pick for Mr Romney, struggled to defend the offshore financial activity on ABC’s This Week, dismissing the criticism as “a distraction from the Obama campaign”.

And a Romney spokesman suggested the new attack was inappropriate.

“The Obama campaign’s latest unfounded character assault on Mitt Romney is unseemly and disgusting,” spokeswoman Andrea Saul said. “Mitt Romney had a successful career in the private sector, pays every dime of taxes he owes, has given generously to charitable organisations and served numerous causes greater than himself.”

The new push by Obama and his allies comes two days after the release of a lacklustre jobs report that said the US unemployment rate was stuck at 8.2%.