HSBC Is Said to Be the Focus of a Tax-Evasion Investigation

According to this New York Times article by Lynnley Browning, “Federal authorities are considering whether to serve a broad legal summons on HSBC to ascertain whether it sold tax-evasion services to scores of wealthy American clients… .” The recent indictment of a Somerset, NJ resident by federal prosecutors in the U.S. District Court in Newark appears “as something much more than just an indictment,” said Lawrence S. Horn, a lawyer for the Somerset resident. Horn added that “the timing of this indictment appears to be a ‘clubbed invitation’ for American citizens with undisclosed accounts to apply for admission into the second initiative of the voluntary disclosure program or risk prosecution once that bank eventually discloses his or her name to the I.R.S.” Similar stories on this topic also were published in The Star-Ledger (January 27, 2011) and Bloomberg Businessweek (January 27, 2011).