The Irish drugs company Elan is said to have used its Bermuda connections to raise $950 million, according to reports from the UK.

The company has been under scrutiny for its accounting practices which are seen as less than crystal clear and has seen its share price plummet in the past week.

Pressure was growing on the management of Elan as it emerged that the Irish drugs company had used two controversial Bermuda-based vehicles to raise $950 million over the past three years.

Elan's shares fell a further 18 percent on the Dublin Stock Exchange as lawyers in America accused the company of cheating shareholders with misleading statements and artificially inflated accounts.

Concern about off-balance sheet vehicles has surged since the collapse of the US energy group Enron, and has brought Bermuda sharply into focus.

Bermuda has been linked to "dodgy" accounting practices and has seen the Island come under scrutiny of the world press.

Bermuda-based Tyco's accounting practices have been under fire, and Enron also had subsidiaries in Bermuda.

And Bermuda's Global Crossing filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week has added fuel to the fire.

Elan has two spin-off entities in Bermuda called EPI01 and EPI02, which it legally owns but does not control.

Elan's vice chairman Tom Lynch said the "qualified special purpose entities", which are incorporated in Bermuda, were a handy way of raising cash when market conditions were choppy.

He said: "I don't know what other people have done, but we saw it as a good way of raising money."

In 1999 and 2000, Elan transferred parcels of quoted and unquoted securities into the vehicles, then invited banks and financial institutions to invest in them over a five-year period.

Investors in the EPI01 and EPI02 are not allowed to sell any of the securities, of which only 40 percent are traded publicly, with the exception that they can accept take-over offers.

The two vehicles are controlled by boards of directors appointed by their investors. Mr Lynch said he did not know the identity of these directors.

The entities were previously included in Elan's Irish and British accounts but not in the company's accounts in the US - where the majority of its investors are.

Elan's shares are listed in London, New York and Dublin. The 18 percent fall took them to a five-year low of euros 16 in Dublin, completing a 70 percent collapse in a week.

Law firm Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz began proceedings against Elan in New York, while a rival firm filed a lawsuit in California, accusing the company of breaching disclosure rules.

The chairman and chief executive of Elan, Donald Geaney, arrived in the United States this week to undertake a week-long series of meetings with investors to talk up his shattered pharmaceutical company.

Mr. Geaney arrived to give a long-scheduled address to hundreds of investors at a global pharmaceutical conference in New York's Grand Hyatt Hotel on Tuesday morning. Reporters were excluded from the conference, organised by Merrill Lynch.

Moody's has put the shares on notice for possible downgrade. Tyco shares plunged after Standard & Poor's downgraded the troubled conglomerate's debt from A to BBB, two notches above junk status.

In the last month, the Bermuda-based company has lost more than half of its market value over questions about undisclosed transactions.