A former Citi employee who claimed she was fired for refusing to mislead federal regulators has accused the bank’s operations chief of intentional deceit in an amended lawsuit filed Thursday.
In the suit, Kathleen Martin, Citi’s former interim data transformation chief, alleges that COO Anand Selva “wanted to misreport Citi's metrics to deceive” its primary regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, into thinking the bank was in compliance with requirements of a $400 million settlement agreement it entered in 2020 over risk management issues.
If successful, Selva’s alleged misrepresentation “would also have been a deception upon Citi’s shareholders, the federal government and the public at large,” the suit said. “On the other hand, if Selva had attempted to deceive the OCC and failed, his actions would have had enormous legal and financial implications for Citi.”
According to the complaint, which amends a lawsuit originally filed in May, Selva expressed to Martin that reporting some factual data to the OCC might make the bank “look bad,” and coached her on how to fudge the data in Citi’s favor.
“Martin protested because she believed that doing so would be misleading and unlawful,” the lawsuit alleges. “Selva then began to question whether the Bank should report the metric at all, asking, ‘who is asking us to do this’ and ‘why do we have to use this metric.’”
The OCC required the bank to do so. Ultimately, Martin opted to report Citi’s metrics accurately to the regulator, the complaint alleged, and she reported Selva to human resources.
Less than two weeks later, Martin was fired in retaliation, she alleged.
A spokesperson for Citi denies these claims.
“Ms. Martin’s employment was lawfully and legitimately terminated,” the spokesperson told Banking Dive via email. “Her claims to the contrary have no merit and we intend to defend against them in court.”
Though Martin alleged she was fired despite Citi’s internal documents showing she “exceed[ed] expectations,” the bank said in a motion to dismiss her suit in June that she was fired for lacking the “requisite leadership and engagement skills to successfully execute in the significant role of interim Data Transformation Chair.”
Citi has until Aug. 8 to respond to Martin’s complaint.
