HSBC clients guilty of tax fraud
A father and son team who were clients of HSBC Holdings have been found guilty of hiding more than $49 million from the US tax authorities. The property developers from Miami Beach, Leon and Mauricio Cohen used offshore accounts to conceal more than $150 million in assets from the country’s Internal Revenue Service.
In a statement released to the media, The US Attorney for Florida’s Southern District said the pair was found guilty of conspiracy to defraud the USA and filing false tax returns by a jury in Fort Lauderdale.
The pair, which was arrested on April 15 this year, will be sentenced on December 17. Both have been warned that they could face up to 11 years behind bars.
The arrests of the father and son in New York came on the same day as the deadline for filing federal tax returns. Europe’s largest bank, HSBC, also narrowly avoided being drawn into the crackdown on wealthy tax cheats who were avoiding paying charges on their fortunes by keeping their cash abroad.
The two men failed to pay tax on the $33 million sale of a New York hotel ten years ago, according to the court documents. The defendants used a HSBC bank account in Switzerland in the name of bearer share company Panamanian to store the cash.
In a statement, the US Attorney’s Office said the Cohens’ failed to report the sale to the US tax authorities along with their other related businesses.