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Judge Jed Rakoff has rejected the SEC’s proposed wrist slap of Citibank for selling mortgage-backed securities it knew to be of poor qualify. Effectively, what he did was join this complaint with SEC’s complaint–filed at the same time as they filed the proposed Citi settlement–against a Citi employee, Brian Stoker, in which the SEC explicitly alleged that Citi knew what it was doing when it dealt shitty securities it intended to short. By doing so, Rakoff imposed the same trial process on this complaint as on Stoker. Effectively, he’s saying, “If you’re prepared to prove that Stoker knew what he...

Video from inside the Citibank where 23 Occupy Wall Street protestors were arrested appears to show demonstrators yelling at bank employees and ignoring warnings by security to take their protests outside. “We were asked to leave by management, but chose to keep on talking,” Elana Carroll told Gawker‘s Max Read. “Our talk was slowing down and coming to a close. We had been inside probably between 10 and 20 minutes total when suddenly we heard “doors are being locked now!” from one of the men who’d been standing in the doorway.”

Click link to see YouTube video of 30 LaGuardia Citibank customers being arrested for closing their accounts

Citibank is next with a new banking fee The Bank of America rival says it will begin charging for checking accounts unless customers keep more on deposit. By E. Scott Reckard, Los Angeles Times September 30, 2011, 6:12 p.m. Another day, another new bank fee. As the uproar swelled over Bank of America Corp.'s planned $5 monthly charge for debit card use, megabank rival Citigroup Inc. was notifying many Citibank customers that they soon would have to start paying for their checking accounts unless they maintained significantly higher balances. Letters are going out across the country alerting Citi customers of...

U.S. banking giant Citigroup Inc. said this week it would charge $15 per month for checking account holders who kept a balance below $6,000. The firm's move comes on the heels of Bank of America's announcement this week that it would charge $5 for most debit card holders and sparked at least one desertion, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday. Cheryl Holt of Burbank, Calif., said she was "on my way out the door right now … off to start a new account at my nearest credit union." "Should have done it years before," she added. Holt said she received...

As I detailed here in February in "Dick Durbin Is Stealing Your Free Checking," thanks to price controls on debit card transactions from the Durbin Amendment of the 2010 Dodd-Frank "financial reform" law, free checking is going the way of the dodo bird. The Durbin price controls on interchange fees -- the so-called "swipe fees" that retailers pay to bank and credit unions that process debit card transactions, go into effect this Saturday, October 1, and are already showing more dire effects than originally predicted. Not only is free checking disappearing at a rapid pace -- a new Bankrate.com survey...

Standard & Poor's President Deven Sharma is leaving the credit-rating firm at the end of the year, according to a person familiar with the matter. The credit-rating firm plans to announce Mr. Sharma's exit on Tuesday before the markets open, the person said. Douglas Peterson, chief operating officer of Citigroup Inc.'s Citibank unit, will succeed Mr. Sharma on Sept. 12, that person said.

Citibank is facing scrutiny in an Indonesian small-business man's death after the man reportedly was subjected to a "harsh interrogation" over an unpaid debt. The International Business Times identified the man as Irzen Octa, who was $5,700 in debt on his Citibank credit card. He reportedly was led walking into a room in Jakarta last March but emerged a few hours later in a wheelchair. Investigators presume Octa, 50, was either unconscious or dead by that point, the Times reported.

US Politicians Duped By The Brotherhood In the United States, one individual maintained a pretense of "moderation" which would later embarrass the left and the right. According to the testimony of Dr. Michael Waller to the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Abdurahman Alamoudi was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. A man born in Eritrea in 1951, he arrived in the US in 1979 and became a naturalized US citizen on May 23, 1996. From 1985 onwards he became involved in many Muslim groups. In 1990 he founded the Washington DC-based American Muslim Council (AMC), which Waller states "has...

Citigroup announced quarterly profits of $1.3 billion on Tuesday, bringing its 2010 earnings to $10.6 billion, as the bank saw fewer losses on troubled loans. This is the first time Citigroup has posted a full-year profit since Vikram S. Pandit was named chief executive in 2007. Citigroup reported a loss of $1.6 billion in 2009, on top of a crippling $18 billion loss the year before. The bank has now turned a profit for four consecutive quarters.

Gurgaon police on Tuesday registered a first information report (FIR) against Indian-born global chief executive of Citigroup Vikram Pandit and ten others in the $80 million Citibank fraud case in the north Indian state of Haryana. The police also registered an FIR against Citibank chairman William R Rhodes along with other senior officials based in India based on a complaint filed by Sanjiv Agarwal, a high networth individual. Last week, Citibank uncovered a fraud at its Gurgaon branch involving diversion of its depositors’ money into the stock market.

A working group of attorneys general and banking officials from all 50 states has gathered evidence in its probe of potentially improper or illegal lending and servicing practices. The group met with representatives of five top mortgage lenders and servicers — GMAC/Ally, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo and Bank of America. "We are having ongoing discussions with these institutions. We have also met with groups of investors and a number of consumers … We are well under way with that process." The investigation came together quickly in the fall, after complaints arose about lenders and servicers using "robo-signing" practices...

Citibank is suing the developer of the proposed Ground Zero mosque to recover some $100,000 in overdue credit charges. Not to worry, though, says Sharif El-Gamal -- getting yourself sued, he alleges, is a way to get "financial institutions" to "restructure debt." Sounds a little loosey-goosey to us -- and certainly not a practice that's appropriate when tax dollars are involved. Which, as chance would have it, is cause for concern: It seems that El-Gamal and mosque co-developer Imam Feisal Rauf have applied for some $5 million in grants from a fund set up with federal post-9/11 money meant for...

October 8, 2010 By Larry Keane Once again Citibank has drawn the ire of the firearms community over its credit policies. This time it deals with not extending lines of credit to businesses even remotely related to the firearms industry. As many people remember back in January 2008, NSSF took Citi Merchant Services to task over its decision to stop processing credit card transactions involving the lawful sale of firearms by law-abiding, federally licensed, firearm distributors/retailers. Unfortunately, it became evident that the decision was not a mistake of a single employee, but was rather a corporate-wide policy. Fast forward to...

Several companies that escaped financial failure two years ago through massive taxpayer-funded bailouts are spending millions of dollars to make donations to political causes and even some candidates' campaigns. General Motors, Chrysler and Citigroup are just three of the biggest bailout recipients who have continued to remain politically active, through their political action committees, federal lobbying or direct donations to the pet projects of lawmakers. The potential public relations disaster for firms spending big dollars on political causes and federal lobbying after being extended a taxpayer lifeline has led some, such as AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to suspend...

Extract: Debrahlee Lorenzana is filing a lawsuit against Citibank because they fired her, she says, for the strangest reason: she's too hot. ....Her bosses told her that "as a result of the shape of her figure, such clothes were purportedly 'too distracting' for her male colleagues and supervisors to bear," she says

Amy Goodman of the Marxist Democracy Now! network reported yesterday on the arrest of a “leading Democratic donor” named Hassan Nemazee. Here is the story, in its entirety: Back in the United States, a leading Democratic donor has been arrested and charged with seeking to defraud the financial giant Citibank. Hassan Nemazee is accused of submitting forged documents to secure a $74 million loan. Nemazee has given at least $150,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee since 2006 and supported several other leading Democratic politicians. Not much to sink your teeth into there. Could it be that Goodman is downplaying...

The shady Iranian fundraiser who for years donated lucrative sums to top Democrats—including the president, vice president and secretary of state—has pleaded guilty to a major bank-fraud scheme that could land him in jail for nearly two decades.Disgraced Democratic money man Hassan Nemazee admitted this week that he defrauded three financial institutions out of nearly $300 million in loan proceeds by falsifying documents and signatures to show he had hundreds of millions of dollars worth of collateral. The Ivy League-educated crook then used the proceeds to donate big bucks to the campaigns of federal, state and local candidates. Among them...

Note: The following text is a quote: Hassan Nemazee Pleads Guilty in Manhattan Federal Court to $292 Million Bank Fraud PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that HASSAN NEMAZEE pleaded guilty today to charges of defrauding Bank of America, N.A. ("BofA"), Citibank, N.A. ("Citibank"), HSBC Bank USA, N.A. ("HSBC"), and a longtime friend and business associate of a total of more than $290 million in loan proceeds. NEMAZEE entered his guilty plea before United States District Judge SIDNEY H. STEIN in Manhattan federal court. According to the superseding Information, filed today, to...

Ralph Remakel received a Citibank letter postmarked Feb. 16 that notified him of a recent Citibank error. It turns out he wasn't the only one. In late January, Citibank mailed year-end tax statements to 600,000 Citi customers via the U.S. Postal Service that included the customers' Social Security numbers ... on the outside of the envelope. Citi called the mistake a "processing error." Although the nine-digit numbers were not identified as Social Security numbers (they were printed at the lower edge of the envelope with other numbers and letters and resembled a mail routing number), Citi still reacted to the...

Citibank: No More DDA AccountsKarl DenningerThe Market Ticker Feburary 20,2010 I'm going to delve a bit into the Ticker from yesterday in which I advised people to get the hell away from Citibank (NYSE: C) based on a report that an "accidental" mailing of terms changes to all 50 states allegedly only applied in Texas. Some rooting around on The Internet (along with a little help) disclosed this little gem: Texas-only my ass. Note that the date on that file is 12/28/2009 (by the name) with an effective date of January 1st, 2010, and there is nothing that indicates it...

... "I had never missed a payment and I had never been late on a mortgage payment. For the next three months, I sent in my monthly mortgage payment, which reflected the verbal agreement I made with Citibank. After a three month period, I began receiving documents which gave the appearance I was in the process of negotiating for the reduction in my mortgage payments--when I was led to believe back in June, I was meeting my responsibilities regarding the re-financing of my mortgage I had agreed to with Citibank. After a two month period of a back and forth...

WASHINGTON -- More than $2 billion allegedly held on behalf of Iran in Citigroup Inc. accounts were secretly ordered frozen last year by a federal court in Manhattan, in what appears to be the biggest seizure of Iranian assets abroad since the 1979 Islamic revolution. The legal order, executed 18 months ago by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is under seal and hasn't been made public. The court acted in part because of information provided by the U.S. Treasury Department. President Barack Obama has pledged to enact new economic sanctions on Iran at year-end...

So, I'm sure many of us have been getting these letters, see the URL for an example, in the mail from our credit card companies. Since my wife passed away, I've been able to pay off all of them and now have just one card with CitiBank that I use and now pay off each month. I like it because I get airline miles on it and I've had the account for over 20 years. Citibank took $300BILLION of tax payer bail out money and have tried to jack up my rates twice since July. The first time, I called...

WASHINGTON - Mitt Romney had already sent out invitations for his Phoenix fund-raiser, offering supporters the chance to meet him in a Chase Field luxury box over a $300-per-person lunch or a $3,000 VIP reception. But when former rival John McCain called with an offer to be listed as host for the event in his hometown, Romney happily went back to the printer for a new invitation with McCain’s name emblazoned on it. Yesterday, McCain’s gesture helped Romney’s political action committee raise about $80,000. It also consummated an 18-month rapprochement between two competitors who battled for the 2008 GOP presidential...

Taxpayer-Owned Citigroup Still Bankrolling ACORN Submitted by Peter Flaherty on Sun, 09/27/2009 - 18:59   Now that taxpayers are Citigroup’s biggest shareholder, owning 36% of common stock, it is time for the company and its foundation to end its relationship with ACORN and its affiliates.Citigroup has received $45 billion in taxpayer TARP funds. In addition, taxpayers are on the hook for the lion’s share of losses on the company’s $335 billion loan portfolio.According to the 2008 annual tax return of the Citi Foundation, it provided the ACORN Institute, Inc. with grants of $500,000 for each of the years 2006, 2007...

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- New York businessman and prominent Democratic fund- raiser Hassan Nemazee was indicted Monday for allegedly defrauding three banks out of $292 million in loans. Nemazee, 59 years old, was charged with aggravated identity theft and three counts of bank fraud in the indictment. Each bank fraud count carries a term of up to 30 years in prison. A lawyer for Nemazee didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Nemazee, who was involved in various presidential campaigns and once served as finance chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, was initially charged criminally in August related...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hassan Nemazee, a fund-raiser for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, has been indicted for defrauding Bank of America, HSBC and Citigroup Inc out of more than $290 million in loan proceeds, U.S. prosecutors said on Monday. The announcement follows last month's indictment of Nemazee, head of a private equity firm and an Iranian American Political Action Committee board member, on one count of defrauding Citigroup's Citibank. The new indictment adds allegations that he defrauded two other banks, Bank of America and HSBC Bank USA, in a similar fashion by falsifying documents and signatures to...

The Subprime home mortgage collapse...a Primer. It's ALL about the CRA of 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 - This required banks to offer credit throughout their entire market area for “underserved” populations and small businesses. The CRA gave incentives to help low income borrowers become “home owners”. Liberals call this group “low income borrowers”. Conservatives call them a RISK!The CRA was passed by the Carter administration. In 1995 the Clinton administration authorized subprime loans under the CRA. Democrats added these provisions for the securitization of subprime loans and then ENFORCED the lending to high risk individuals. By 2000,...

ACORN’s illegal alien home loan racket By Michelle Malkin  •  September 18, 2009 08:33 AM My column today blasts ACORN Housing Corporation’s criminal-enabling home loan program for illegal aliens. To paraphrase Jon Stewart: Where the hell is everyone?AHC is one of the endless non-profit arms of ACORN. Their response to the BigGovernment.com sting videos hasn’t received as much attention as the national ACORN flagship’s. You can read AHC’s CYA reaction here. ***ACORN’s illegal alien home loan racket by Michelle MalkinCreators Syndicate Copyright 2009There’s one thing more shocking than the illegal alien smuggling advice that an ACORN official in San Diego gave...

THERE'S one thing more shocking than the illegal- alien smuggling advice that an ACORN official in San Diego gave undercover journalists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles: It's the illegal-alien home-loan racket that ACORN has been operating with the full knowledge of the US government. On Wednesday, O'Keefe and Giles published the fifth in a series of BigGovernment.com sting videos. In it, ACORN official Juan Carlos Vera coached the pimp-and-prostitute-posing pair on how best to pull off a border-busting smuggling operation. It would be "better from Tijuana," Vera counseled. He then generously offered the investigative couple his Mexican "contacts" to bring...

(Automatic Translation from Spanish to English)Source: Channel T47, TelemundoTitle: Immigration / "Illegal Immigrants Can Buy Homes" (Indocumentados Pueden Comprar Casa) by Delinés Batlle (BEGIN TRANSLATION) PUBLISHED: September 7, 2005 at 12:11 pm (ET) UPDATED: 30 September 2005, at 9:16 am (eastern) NEW YORK, NY. -- Thanks to an initiative of private banking it is now possible for illegal immigrants to buy homes in the United States without having a social security number. A new program helps immigrants who can not afford home to fulfill their American dream. Elena Hernandez has long had the dream of buying a home, but...

A wealthy investment banker and prominent fundraiser for President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other top Democrats was arrested Tuesday on charges he lied to get a $74 million business loan that -- once confronted by authorities -- he hastily repaid. Prosecutors accused Hassan Nemazee of giving Citibank documents showing he owned millions of dollars in collateral. They said the documents were "fraudulent and forged." A Clinton spokesman didn't immediately return an e-mail message seeking comment. The chairman and chief executive of Manhattan-based Nemazee Capital Corp. served as national finance chairman for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2008, and later...

Hassan Nemazee, a multimillionaire Iranian-American investment banker and top Democratic Party fundraiser, was arrested today by federal law enforcement authorities in New York City and charged with engaging in criminal fraud for his role in arranging a $74 million dollar loan from Citibank, Bloomberg reported. U.S. Attorney Prett Bharara in New York City and FBI investigators told Dow Jones Newswires the 59-year-old Namazee applied for the Citibank loans for Nemazee Capital Corp. by giving Citibank "numerous documents that purported to establish the existence of accounts in Nemazee's name at various financial institutions containing many hundreds of millions of dollars." According...

In the late 1970s, as the federal government arranged to bail out Chrysler, not-yet-famous economist Alan Greenspan warned the problem “was not that it would fail, but that it would succeed.” And it did, thus paving the way for more bailouts, including (again) Chrysler. But the first Chrysler bailout was just one company, one time. The rolling series of financial bailouts over the past year -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG and Citibank, General Motors and Chrysler, etc. -- have not yet succeeded or failed. But they’ve raised a new moral hazard. These days, having invested so much in...

There is one overwhelming fact about the world economy that cannot be wished away. Excess capacity in industry is hovering at levels not seen since the Great Depression. Too many steel mills have been built, too many plants making cars, computer chips or solar panels, too many ships, too many houses. They have outstripped the spending power of those supposed to buy the products. This is more or less what happened in the 1920s when electrification and Ford’s assembly line methods lifted output faster than wages. It is a key reason why the Slump proved so intractable, though debt then...

This is what Citibank SHOULD say to us. Not what they will say. It is very revealing: snip "First off, you just swapped your preferred shares for common stock. Right now it looks as if the exchange offer will wipe about 11 percent off the $25 billion the government invested for you in the preferreds that are being swapped, out of a total of $45 billion invested in Citi since the credit crisis began. And you’re losing the 5 percent dividend you were getting on that money. Common shares may be riskier investments than preferred stock. But hey, what’s life...

While much of Wall Street and the rest of the financial sector are finally seeing some sun, the storm clouds around Citigroup just don't seem to break. Last Friday, the company said it earned $3.4 billion in its second quarter. It was the second quarter in a row that Citi had announced a profit, after many critics said the company was done for. In a press release, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit triumphantly said, "Our financial results today reflect the incredibly dedicated efforts of all of our people around the world and their success in implementing our plan." But in the...

Before “subprime” became a crisis, ACORN was active in the mortgage market, fighting in support of the policies that helped lay the groundwork for the banking collapse of 2008. ACORN lobbied legislators and banks to ensure that any person, regardless of credit history, income, or assets, would qualify for a mortgage. They mastered the art of pressuring banks – often through radical and controversial methods – to provide subprime loans to all comers. President Obama acted as a lawyer for ACORN in a lawsuit against Citibank forcing it to provide subprime loans. It was many of these “toxic” loans that...

Dilution to ensue as embattled bank bolsters capitalization NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Citigroup Inc. has finalized an agreement with the federal government that will recapitalize the company with $58 billion of new common stock and make the U.S. taxpayer its largest shareholder, the bank said Wednesday.Moving to bolster its capitalization, Citigroup /quotes/comstock/13*!c/quotes/nls/c (C 3.52, +0.11, +3.23%) unveiled an agreement under which the government will exchange up to $25 billion of the bank's preferred securities for interim securities and warrants. The deal, which puts a conversion price of $3.25 a share on Citi common, was originally supposed to be completed in...

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is reportedly pressing for a management shake-up at embattled bank Citigroup Inc., putting CEO Vikram Pandit in the hot seat. The Wall Street Journal cited people familiar with the matter for its report on Friday. "We are confident in our management and confident that we will continue to position Citi ( C - news - people ) for a return to sustained profitability," Chairman Richard Parsons said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press. A spokesman for the FDIC declined to comment. Citigroup shares slipped a penny to $3.56 in morning trading Friday. Citigroup...

For the past two to three months (since I was deployed) Mrs. GBC has been getting harrassing telephone calls from CitiBank attempting to intimidate her into making payments on debts that have long since been satisifed. She only told me about this tonight. I informed them if she gets another call the next calls I am going to make are going to be to Sen Shelby's office along with the State Attorney General.

* Citigroup Inc., soon to be one-third owned by the U.S. government, is asking the Treasury for permission to pay special bonuses to many key employees, according to people familiar with the matter. The request comes as Citigroup is grappling with broad government pay restrictions that could break apart its legendary energy-trading unit. People at that unit, Phibro, are threatening to leave because of pay caps tied to the U.S. bailout of Citigroup. Phibro has been the source of hundreds of millions of dollars in profits for the bank, and has paid out hefty compensation, including a roughly $100 million...

Alexander Lewis, who has been at Citigroup since 1999 and before that worked at the Federal Reserve, will head to the Treasury "to work on domestic financial issues," said the Citigroup memo, which was sent Tuesday. -WSJ I suppose it is a step up for his career, but I am not so certain it is a step up for America. Citigroup’s chief economist Lewis Alexander just got a new dream job at the Treasury Department. And wow, he also once worked for the Federal Reserve – impressive! He is a professional con-man. Again, the administration is blatantly recycling old crooks...

Just a thought. Prior to Nov 4 elections, Obama et al, commenced trash talking the American economy. It's been unrelenting since. Subsequent to the inevitable decline of world markets, and the accompanying destruction of trillions of dollars of American/international wealth, this administration purchased preferred shares of Citibank. While still trash talking our economy, the present Administration has used the hammered economy and subsequent public fear, to impliment its political ambitions - incidentally assured to further erode investor confidence. Citi, along with most financial sector stock values, sinks to basically bankruptcy levels - unimaginable before Obama's run for the White House....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc Chairman Richard Parsons said on Thursday that the bank does not need any more capital injections from the government and expressed confidence that Citi would remain in private hands. Asked in an interview with Reuters whether Citigroup needed additional government capital injections, Parsons said: "No, I think actually, particularly with the latest conversion... Citi is actually one of the better capitalized banks in the world." Parsons was speaking on the sidelines of a Business Roundtable event where President Barack Obama addressed business executives. The Citigroup leader also brushed aside any prospect of the U.S. government...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. policymakers must develop a way to handle the failure of a systemically important, financial conglomerate, possibly modeled after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp's procedure for smaller banks, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Tuesday. The FDIC has hinted it could take on that job, with Chairman Sheila Bair saying recently that the agency's model for failed banks works well. But she said the FDIC would need more authority and resources to resolve financial conglomerates. The FDIC insures about $4.5 trillion of deposits at more than 8,000 banks. It has the authority to take over an...

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Two top enate Republicans said Sunday that banks shouldn't be able to count on any more bailout money — and that the federal government should let some of them fail rather than distribute further funds to keep them afloat. . . . . . Former GOP presidential candidate John McCain told Fox News Sunday that he did not think President Obama "made the hard decision, and that is to let these banks fail." He did not call for nationalization of troubled financial institutions, which many Republicans oppose, but said their assets should be sold. "Unfortunately, the shareholders...

WASHINGTON - With major banks flailing and criticism swelling in some quarters over how President Obama is handling the crisis, a growing chorus of economists, former top government officials, and analysts is calling on the Obama administration to put the institutions into federal receivership and closely follow the model of how the government dealt with the savings and loan crisis. They avoid the word "nationalization," but say that some major institutions that have received billions in taxpayer money might otherwise be insolvent. Those voices, from both parties, include a Republican senator, a Nobel-winning economist who backed Obama, and a former...

Citigroup stock drops below $1 a share, relaxed NYSE rule allows continued trading.CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- Shares of Citigroup Inc., once the nation's most powerful bank, fell below $1 a share Thursday. The stock fell as low as 97 cents in late morning trading. It was down 11 cents, or 9.7 percent, at $1.02 in mid-afternoon. New York-based Citi has lost more than 85 percent of its value so far this year, and is down more than 95 percent from a year ago as the bank was pummeled by the financial market crisis. Citigroup's shares will remain on the New...