PARIS - France and Germany are leading a charge for a Group of 20 summit to blacklist tax havens and offshore finance centres blamed for scams and dodgy investments.

Their plan is fuelled by anger at the tiny, well-heeled territories fingered as a cause of the global recession and their mood is now strongly mirrored in Washington.

Jurisdictions that cast a veil of secrecy over foreign bank accounts or refuse to co-operate with regulators will be named and shamed and open to retaliation, according to the Franco-German plan.

"We want to act with determination against unco-operative places in fiscal, prudential or money-laundering matters," French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said in Paris this week alongside her German counterpart, Peer Steinbrueck.

They called for a trio of watchdogs - the Financial Action Task Force on Money-Laundering, the Financial Stability Forum and the OECD - to define the criteria of "non-co-operation" and name pariah countries.

Their blueprint will be put to the April 2 London summit, where 20 major and emerging nations will debate a stimulus for the global economy, controls on "shadow banks" such as hedge funds, and beefing up banks' capital requirements.

The Franco-German plan would require G20 states to tear up bilateral treaties with countries "that refuse to incorporate the highest standards of the OECD and the United Nations", said Lagarde.

Banks and insurers would also be required to disclose, in their annual reports, their use of tax and regulatory havens.

The size of these commitments would determine their level of capital requirements. In other words, the company would have to build a stronger safety net if it decided to invest through these riskier vehicles, and would thus incur a higher financial cost by having to set aside more capital.

The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) calculates that between US$5 trillion ($10 trillion) and US$7 trillion are salted away by individuals or companies to evade taxes or political instability in their home countries.

At present, only three places - the European micro-states of Andorra, Liechtenstein and Monaco - feature on its list of "unco-operative" tax havens.

At the weekend, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was asked whether Switzerland would also be appropriate for that list. "Based on the actual state of things and on the rules, it could be, yes," he said, in remarks that left Switzerland reeling.

France and Germany have campaigned for years for international tax loopholes to be closed up. Germany alone believe it misses out on 30 billion ($75 billion) in tax revenue each year through evasion.