By IANS,
New York : Another Indian American banking with HSBC India has pleaded guilty to tax evasion days after a New Jersey businessman admitted to conspiring with five HSBC bankers to hide offshore accounts in India.
Josephine Bhasin with an HSBC account worth as much as $8.3 million, according to the prosecution, entered the guilty plea before a magistrate judge in US District Court in New York Wednesday.
Bhasin is the second taxpayer charged in a crackdown focusing on whether HSBC helped clients with Indian accounts hide
assets from the IRS as part of a wider US investigation of banks that attract tax dodgers.
Her case follows the guilty plea by New Jersey businessman Vaibhav Dahake, 44, Monday to keeping his Indian accounts “below the radar” to evade taxes in the United States.
Dahake, who faces a federal prison sentence ranging from 10 to 18 months under the guilty plea is scheduled to be sentenced July 22.
Dahake was doing business with HSBC NRI Services for non-resident Indians, which “encouraged US citizens to open undeclared bank accounts in India,” according to the indictment.
Bhasin and Dahake’s guilty pleas came days after a US judge in California gave permission to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to serve a so-called John Doe summons on HSBC for information about Americans who may have banked in
India to hide accounts from the IRS.