U.S. criminal tax evasion case may involve HSBC – An investor in Virginia pleaded guilty on Tuesday to criminal tax evasion involving an international bank, said by a person briefed on the case to be HSBC, one of the world’s largest private banks. The case shows that authorities are expanding beyond UBS, the giant Swiss financial company, in their scrutiny of banks suspected of helping wealthy Americans evade taxes. It’s also an example of a bank that apparently took steps to hide its operations in the wake of the UBS case. The investor, Dr. Andrew Silva, of Sterling, Va., pleaded guilty to failing to disclose to the American tax authorities more than $250,000 that he had kept at a bank using a sham Liechtenstein trust.

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