The kidnappers of Welsh banker Peter Shaw are reported to have made a demand for $2m.

They are said to have relayed the demand from telephone kiosks in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, from where Mr Shaw was abducted by an armed gang on June 18.

Facts: Peter Shaw

Originally from Maesteg Home in Cowbridge Worked on EU project in Georgia Previously a Midland Bank manager Kidnapped on 18 June

The Foreign office has refused to confirm the claim that his captors have been in touch with the authorities who have offered a �5,000 reward - about four years' earning in the former Soviet state - for information about his whereabouts.

Mr Shaw, 57, from Cowbridge, in the Vale of Glamorgan, was taken just hours before he was due to return to the UK at the end of a six-year contract.

The Georgian government has indicated the abduction could be the work of trained, senior law enforcement officials.

A rescue operation on the streets of capital Tbilisi days after his disappearance failed to find the banker at his expected basement location.

Now sources within the Georgian Interior Ministry said unidentified kidnappers tried to call the EU sponsored bank where Mr Shaw worked.

It does not help anyone, least of all Mr Shaw, to speculate in these circumstances

Foreign Office

But local police and bank officials say they are unaware that such a ransom demand had been made.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: "There has been a lot of rumours and we are not in the game of commenting about rumours.

She said: "It does not help anyone, least of all Mr Shaw, to speculate in these circumstances."

This is the second report of Mr Shaw's kidnappers' being in touch with the Georgian authorities.

On Monday, his MP, Vale of Glamorgan member John Smith, told BBC Radio Wales he had been told telephone contact had been made with the kidnappers.

Two detectives from Scotland Yard are in Georgia helping with the investigation.

Mr Shaw took early retirement as a manager with the Midland Bank six years ago.

Aid programmes

Since then he had worked abroad including another kidnap hotspot of Tashkent in another former Soviet republic, Azerbaijan, and he had also worked in Budapest, Hungary.

In 1996 he began working as a project director for Abgrobiznesbank under the Tacis development programme sponsored by the European Union, which has pressed Georgia to find its man.

Georgian ministers have said they feared the EU could freeze crucial aid programmes in the country if they do not find him.

Last year Mr Shaw's work was rewarded when he was presented with the British Consultancy Bureau's "Man of the year" award from the Duke of Gloucester.