FIR against Vikram Pandit in Citi fraud case

The Gurgaon police have registered an FIR against 11 Citibank officials, including the global chief executive officer Vikram S Pandit in the Rs 300 crore Citibank fraud case. Faizan Haider reports.

The Gurgaon police have registered an FIR against 11 Citibank officials, including the global chief executive officer Vikram S Pandit in the Rs 300 crore Citibank fraud case.

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The FIR has been registered on the complaint of Sanjeev Aggarwal, a resident of DLF phase one, who was reportedly duped of R32.43 crore.

Aggarwal told police in his complaint that he was had opened a wealth management account with Citibank in 2004.

"Citibank has developed a practice of getting blank demand drafts requisition forms and common transfer forms signed by customers on the grounds that customers being busy professionals would not always be available for signing these papers," Aggarwal alleged in the complaint.

The bank, however, used to send portfolios statement through the Citibank email account of prime accused Shivraj Puri.

"In the month of December, we received a call from a senior executive at Citibank telling us that our relationship manager was on leave and would not be coming to the office for some time. We were not comfortable with this and asked the official to send a detailed list of our investments," he said. On scrutiny the Aggarwal couple discovered that the statement they had received from the bank and the one they used to get from Shivraj Puri were different.

A case has been registered and the other Citibank officials who have been named in the FIR are William R Rhodes, John Gerspach, Douglas Petersan, Amit Zarpuri, Ashwin Chadha, Amrita Farmahan, Rahul Soota, N Rajshekaran, Pramit Jhaveri and Shivraj Puri. When contacted Citibank officials refused to comment on the issue.