Citibank India

Established in 1902 in Calcutta (Kolkata), Citi India has a long history. Currently, Citigroup, the owner of Citi India, is one of the largest foreign direct investors in financial services in the country. Citi introduced early innovations to India such as the ATM, credit card, 24-hour phone banking, internet banking, and instant SMS alerts.

Citi India is backed by a network spanning 98 markets across the world. The bank serves close to 2.5 million customers ranging from corporate houses, multinationals operating in India, SMEs, self-employed entrepreneurs, households, and individuals.

Citibank's Bombay branch has formally responded to allegations linking it to India's biggest financial scandal, flatly rejecting charges of wrongdoing or of flouting central bank guidelines.

The bank has written a 16-page note to the Reserve Bank of India, the central bank, explaining all transactions linked to the $1.2 billion securities scandal, Ravi Bhatia, vice president and director for the bank's corporate affairs, said Tuesday."As far as we're concerned everything was above board," Mr. Bhatia said. The note and additional documentation has also been sent to a parliamentary committee probing the scandal.

A central bank report on the scandal, released in August, accused the Bombay branches of Citibank and Bank of America of irregularities in securities transactions. The scandal was originally exposed in April, sending share prices plummeting.

Ram Niwas Mirdha, chairman of the investigating parliamentary committee, has accused foreign banks of initiating the fraud. Prosecutors allege that brokers and bankers siphoned money from the inter-bank securities market and used it to artificially pump up Bombay share prices.

The London-based Standard Chartered Bank has initiated legal action related to the scandal against Citibank in New York.

The suit is to recover $44 million claimed by Standard Chartered. Citibank is contesting the claim, saying it has no liabilities in the scandal.

Citibank was the biggest foreign player in the Bombay securities market. Between April 1991 and May 1992 it completed business worth more than $8.3 billion - 17 percent of such deals by all banks - according to the report by R. Janakiraman, deputy governor of the central bank. Mr. Bhatia said Citibank was being wrongly portrayed as the villain and dismissed accusations by prominent broker Harshad Mehta that it had masterminded the scandal.

When Mr. Mehta talked to the parliamentary committee earlier this month he had produced no evidence against Citibank, Mr. Bhatia said.

"It's a figment of his imagination," he said.

Mr. Bhatia declined to make available a copy of Citibank's responses to the Janakiraman report but outlined the contents in an interview with Reuters.

"Effectively, what we've told them is that whatever issues have been brought up, they did not have full knowledge of them before submitting the report," Mr. Bhatia said.

"We did not have the opportunity to respond before the report was published," he said.

Citibank had "not done any irregular securities transactions," Mr. Bhatia added.

Responding to central bank allegations that Citibank's bankers receipts - promissory notes issued to pledge delivery of government securities - were improperly formatted and were signed by only one instead of the required two signatories, Mr. Bhatia said this was common market practice that had since been rectified.

"No bank was using the required format," he said.[4]

Citi India offers consumers and institutions a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit; corporate and investment banking; institutional equity research and sales; foreign exchange; credit cards, commercial banking; and treasury and trade solutions. Citi India's balance sheet is considered among the best performing in the Indian banking industry, with a net NPA level of 0.55% as of 31 March 2018.

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