HSBC New Jersey client admits conspiracy in offshore tax case

NEW JERSEY: A New Jersey client of HSBC Holdings pleaded guilty to charges that he hid as much as $4.7 million through Swiss and Indian accounts not declared to the US Internal Revenue Service.

Sanjay Sethi, 52, who owns SanVision Technology, conspired with HSBC bankers in New York, London and Geneva to hide assets from the IRS, he admitted on Monday in federal court in Newark, New Jersey. Sethi will pay a $2.37-m penalty for failing to file reports required for foreign accounts. "Sethi and his co-conspirators used nominee and shell companies formed in tax-haven jurisdictions and elsewhere to conceal the defendant's ownership and control of assets and income from the IRS," according to his charging document.

HSBC's Geneva-based private bank is one of at least 11 Swiss firms under investigation by US prosecutors investigating offshore tax evasion. HSBC's Swiss unit gave lists of employees to aid the US probe, a spokesman said in April. Last month, London-based HSBC, Europe's largest bank, agreed to pay $1.92 billion to settle US probes of money laundering in the biggest such accord ever.

Medard Schoenmaeckers, a Zurich-based spokesman for HSBC's private bank, declined to comment on the court decision. Since 2009, at least 50 US clients of offshore banks and more than two dozen bankers, lawyers and advisers have been charged in a crackdown on offshore tax evasion by the US.

Sethi, of Watchung, New Jersey, is one of several HSBC clients charged with opening undeclared accounts through the bank's NRI division, which were marketed to US citizens of Indian descent.