Citibank CEO Vikram Pandit named in FIR

The crisis at Citibank over the Rs 300-crore fraud case deepened today, with one of those duped filing a police case against the bank’s top brass, including global CEO Vikram Pandit and India CEO Pramit Jhaveri.

The Guragon police registered the FIR on the basis of a complaint made by Sanjeev Aggarwal, managing director of investment firm Helion Advisors.

The fraud at the bank’s Gurgaon branch, involving diversion of depositors’ money into the stock market was uncovered last week. The FIR, which alleged criminal breach of trust, falsification of accounts, cheating and criminal conspiracy, also named Citibank Chairman William R Rhodes, CFO John Gerspach and COO Douglas Peterson.

They are based in New York.

“All persons named... in collision and conspiracy with each other and other known or unknown persons, have misappropriated large sums of money to the tune of Rs 32.43 crore,” Aggarwal stated in his complaint. The case has been registered under Sections 409, 477A, 420 and 120B of the IPC.

Guragon Police Commissioner S S Deswal said the police immediately registered the FIR after receiving the complaint.

In a late evening statement on Aggarwal’s complaint and subsequent FIR, Citibank India said: “As this individual well knows, Citi India found and reported the matter to regulators and law enforcement agencies. His claims against senior executives are without basis and we intent to contest them vigorously. It was on Citi India’s complaint that the Gurgaon police filed the first information report and began investigations. Citi will continue to cooperate with authorities on this investigation.”

Others who figure in the FIR are Amit Zarpuri, Ashwini Chaddha, Amrita Farmahan, Rahul Soota, N Rajshekaran, and Shivraj Puri, the main accused. Puri, a relationship manager at Citibank’s DLF Phase-II branch in Gurgaon, surrendered and was later arrested. Puri allegedly told the police that the top rung at Citibank was aware of how his scam worked.

According to the police, Hero Group executive Sanjay Gupta, who was arrested for his involvement yesterday, made a profit of Rs 20 crore by allegedly duping colleagues into investing sums amounting to Rs 200 crore in his two firms: BG Finance and G2S Management Consultants. From here, Puri is believed to have siphoned off the money to various bank accounts. Eighty-one such accounts have been traced by the police.

Investigations have revealed that most of the money was routed via brokerage firms Religare and Bonanza to the derivatives market and invested in Nifty index options.