A former Citi employee who claims he was fired for refusing to mislead federal regulators has accused the bank’s operations chief of deliberately committing deception. Amended lawsuit It was submitted Thursday.
In the lawsuit, Kathleen Martin, Citi’s former interim head of data transformation, alleges that Chief Operating Officer Anand Selva “misreported Citi’s metrics and attempted to mislead the primary regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, into believing the bank was in compliance with regulatory requirements.” $400 million settlement agreement reached in 2020 Regarding risk management issues.
The lawsuit states that if Selva’s misrepresentations had been successful, “they would have also deceived Citi’s shareholders, the federal government and the public,” and “on the other hand, if Selva had failed in his attempt to deceive the OCC, his actions would have had significant legal and financial consequences for Citi.”
According to the lawsuit: The lawsuit was originally filed in MaySelva told Martin that reporting factual data to the OCC could “harm the bank’s reputation” and instructed him on how to falsify the data to favor Citi.
“Martin protested, believing that doing so was misleading and unlawful,” the complaint alleges. “Selva then began to question whether the bank should report this metric, asking, ‘Who is asking us to do this?’ and ‘Why should we use this metric?'”
The OCC required the bank to do so. Ultimately, Martin chose to accurately report Citi’s metrics to regulators, and she reported Selva to human resources, the complaint alleges.
Less than two weeks later, she claims, Martin was fired in retaliation.
A Citi spokesman denied the allegations.
“Ms. Martin’s employment was lawfully and properly terminated,” a spokesperson told Banking Dive in an email. “Her claims to the contrary are without merit, and we intend to defend against them in court.”
Martin said in an internal City document:[ed] The bank said it was “hopeful.” A motion to dismiss her lawsuit in June She was fired because she lacked “the leadership and engagement skills necessary to succeed in the critical role of interim data conversion chair,” the report said.
City have until August 8 to respond to Martin’s complaint.
