By Jack Queen and Tatiana Bautzer
June 16 (Reuters) – A former Citigroup executive alleged in a lawsuit that the bank fired her in retaliation for identifying regulatory and compliance risks that, according to a Financial Times report on Tuesday, were related to Citi’s efforts to court U.S. President Donald Trump as a client.
The complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court on Monday is heavily redacted but includes allegations that the former executive was fired shortly after raising concerns about the internal process for potentially taking on a client. The Financial Times reported the client was Trump, citing people familiar with the dispute.
Reuters could not immediately confirm the report. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Citigroup denied the allegations and said in a statement that the lawsuit has “absolutely zero merit.”
Citigroup said in a legal filing on Tuesday that the former executive did not meet the legal requirements for proceeding with the lawsuit anonymously.
The lawsuit, filed under the pseudonym Jane Doe, said the former executive was targeted with a “sham” human resources investigation and fired after she flagged “compliance risks that she believed to violate federal securities laws and misled shareholders.”
The former executive said she identified deficiencies in Citi’s internal controls for risk management, anti-money laundering, reputational risk, and data compliance.
In a redacted section, the lawsuit said the former executive raised some of the concerns as Citi was last year considering whether to open a so-called numbered account, which would have made it anonymous to most employees and therefore hard to monitor. The account was for Trump, according to the Financial Times report.
(Reporting by Pritam Biswas in Bengaluru and Jack Queen and Tatiana Bautzer in New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
