Quoting French intelligence officials, Le Figaro reported that around 1,000 members of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam enforce the collection of the so-called "revolutonary tax" among the 70,000-strong community.

Using threats and intimidation, they force each family to pay one euro a day for each of its members, who are registered in a computer file to ensure their payments are up to date, the report said.

Death threats against family members still in Sri Lanka are commonly used to pressure families to pay up, it said.

Le Figaro reported that the Tigers were shortly to demand a 2,000-euro "loan" from each member of the community, including children, in order to replace a flotilla of speedboats destroyed in last December's tsunami.

The report said the funds from the racket were channelled into Swiss banks.

A confidential intelligence memo from September, quoted by Le Figaro, says that France has become "an important rear base for the Tamil Tigers and their financing of the armed struggle in Sri Lanka".

Some 15,000 Tamil rebels have been fighting the Sri Lankan government to obtain an independent state since 1972. The two sides have observed a ceasefire since February 2002.

Tamils make up about 18 percent of Sri Lanka's 19.2 million population and are concentrated in the rebel-held northern and eastern provinces.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.