The US Justice Department is carrying out a criminal investigation of HSBC clients who may have failed to disclose accounts in India or Singapore to the Internal Revenue Service, Bloomberg said, citing unnamed sources.

One client got a letter from the Justice Department in late June that said prosecutors had “reason to believe that you had an interest in a financial account in India that was not reported to the IRS on either a tax return” or a Treasury Department report disclosing foreign accounts, according to a copy read to the news service by a lawyer for one of the clients, it said.

As previously reported by WealthBriefingAsia and other publications, the Internal Revenue Service, which has already locked horns with UBS in a high-profile tax evasion case that has hit Swiss bank secrecy, has turned its gaze eastward to centres such as Hong Kong and Singapore.

HSBC declined to comment.

Governments in Germany, France, the UK and elsewhere, have also been approached by ex-employees of private banks with stolen client data. HSBC’s private bank in Switzerland, for example, has seen details on thousands of its client accounts offered for sale.

The willingness of governments to pay for such information highlights their determination to stem outflows of revenues, although it raises questions about such governments’ respect for principles of due process of law.