A former Citigroup managing director claims she was pushed out of the bank after raising alarms over risk-management failures, including concerns tied to a possible account for President Donald Trump.
According to the Financial Times, the executive filed suit in Brooklyn federal court this week under the pseudonym Jane Doe, accusing Citi of retaliating against her for identifying "several risk-management deficiencies."
The heavily redacted complaint states that the plaintiff, who worked in Citi's wealth division, was forced out of the bank in April 2025 after flagging "regulatory and compliance risks." Among the issues she raised were so-called know your customer checks, the screening procedures banks use to assess risk when bringing on new clients.
Part of the complaint, though redacted, ties some of those concerns to a period last year when Citi was reportedly deciding whether to extend banking services to Trump. Sources familiar with the matter say the executive specifically objected to internal talks about setting up a numbered account for the president, an arrangement that would have kept his identity hidden from most staff and made oversight difficult.
Those same sources say she was dismissed within days of escalating her concerns about the vetting process for Trump to a more senior figure at the bank.
In a statement, the bank said: "As with the other complaint filed by this plaintiff's attorney against Citi, this suit has absolutely zero merit and we'll demonstrate that through the legal process."
The White House has not responded to the FT’s requests for comment.
In a court filing submitted Tuesday, Citi said the executive was let go just six months into her tenure "after her colleagues made multiple, substantiated complaints regarding her behaviour." The bank further alleged that after mixing up a client's ethnicity, she responded, "what's the difference, they're all the same," and claimed she had also made threatening remarks toward coworkers. Citi has asked the court to strip her of anonymity in the case, arguing that allowing her to remain unnamed would unfairly disadvantage the bank.
The plaintiff's attorney told the Financial Times that Citi's claims were "false."
In her original filing, the executive, who is ethnically Chinese, described the bank's internal investigation as "a sham and a smokescreen designed to push out Doe because of her race, ethnicity, and gender, and in retaliation for her protected activity of internally reporting regulatory, operational, and reputational risks to Citi."
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