The US on Friday announced plans to identify and take punitive measures against offshore jurisdictions that do not co-operate in a crackdown on money laundering.

The proposals aim to make it harder to curb flows of illicit money into the United States, though they would not cover money sent as a result of tax evasion in other countries.

US Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart Eizenstat said that once a country was identified as being "a rogue jurisdiction'' that was unwilling to co-operate, the United States would seek through international organisations to penalise it by making its borrowing costs higher.

Money laundering was made a separate criminal offense in the United States in 1986. One goal of the newly unveiled strategy will be to identify offshore jurisdictions that do not cooperate with the United States.

Mr. Eizenstat was speaking to Reuters after Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Attorney General Janet Reno issued a strategy to make it harder for money gained through criminal behaviour to be recycled through the United States.

It would force casinos, broker-dealers and money transmitters to file reports on suspicious transactions to the government, as banks already must do for large dollar amounts.

It also would make more international crimes like arms trafficking, public corruption and fraud subject to prosecution under US money-laundering laws.

Money-laundering is when criminals seek to cover up the origins of illegally obtained funds and make them look legitimate by funneling them through a string of banks and businesses.

Eizenstat insisted the timing was not connected with allegations about Russians laundering money through the Bank of New York.

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