AIG said over the weekend it had paid over $100 billion of its bailout funds to US states and international banks including Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Societe Generale. The cash was used to cover collateral payments, cancel derivative contracts and meet obligations at its securities lending business after the firm had to be bailed out last year.

Most of the major US and European banks were represented on the list, but AIG revealed that Goldman Sachs was the biggest single beneficiary from the payments, receiving $12.9 billion. Bank of America Corp. and Merrill Lynch together received $12 billion in payments, followed by Societe Generale, which got $11.9 billion and Deutsche Bank, which was handed $11.8 billion.

Payments to municipalities totaled $12.1 billion.

"AIG recognises the importance of upholding a high degree of transparency with respect to the use of public funds," the group said in a statement.

The group had previously argued that disclosing the identity of counterparties could damage its business relationships or cause competitive harm, but it had come under increasing pressure from lawmakers to provide details. The remainder of the $173 billion that AIG received from taxpayers has been used to repay debt, boost capital levels at some of its units and fund vehicles created to wind down its derivatives contracts.

The Obama administration and US senators have reacted angrily to the  $1 billion in bonus payouts and retention pay to executives announced on Sunday by the American insurance giant.

AIG, which has received $173 billion in taxpayer money, succumbed to demands from the US Treasury to scale back the payments. AIG agreed to reduce some retention payments in 2009 by 30 per cent and tie bonuses to the company's recovery. The New York-based insurer still plans to hand out about $165 million on 15 March because of legally binding contracts.

Public anger has been stoked by revelations of bonuses paid by firms at the centre of the financial-market meltdown that has plunged the US into what may become the deepest recession since World War II. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating $3.6 billion in bonuses paid by Merrill Lynch & Co. shortly before Bank of America Corp acquired it.

Lawrence Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council, called the payments ''outrageous'' in an interview on ABC's ''This Week'' programme yesterday. AIG is ''abusing the system.''

"There are a lot of terrible things that have happened in the last 18 months, but what's happened at AIG is the most outrageous", said Summers. But he admitted that, despite the strength of feeling in the White House, there was little the administration could do to stop the bonus payments.

"The easy thing would be to just say... off with their heads, violate the contracts. But we are country of law. The government cannot just abrogate contracts," he said. He said that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner had used all his power, both "legal and moral", to lower the payments.

Geithner was ''really upset'' by AIG's plan to distribute the $165 million, Austan Goolsbee, a top White House economist said on Fox. ''You worry about that backlash'' from the public, ''but you're also angry,'' he said.

''I don't know why they would follow a policy that's really not sensible, is obviously going to ignite the ire of millions of people,'' Goolsbee said. ''And we've done exactly what we can do to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.''

Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the House Financial Services Committee, told ''Fox News Sunday.'' He added that the bonuses were "rewarding incompetence". "These people may have a right to their bonuses. They don't have a right to their jobs forever," he said.

Frank said that starting when the Federal Reserve initiated the AIG rescue last September there should have been stricter rules on executive compensation and clearer guidelines for major financial institutions getting a government bailout. ''Clearly there was a mistake at the beginning,'' he said on Fox. ''These people who were receiving this should have been given much stricter rules at the beginning.''

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, speaking on ABC's ''This Week,'' said other companies lining up for government assistance might follow the example of AIG.

''The message here, I'm afraid, to any business out there that's thinking about taking government money, is let's enter into a bunch of contracts real quick, and we'll have the taxpayers pay bonuses to our employees,'' the Kentucky Republican said. ''This is an outrage.''