Feds: Clinton Fundraiser Forged Signatures To Defraud Citigroup

Zachary Roth | August 28, 2009, 5:41PM

Hassan Nemazee

We've taken a look at the complaint filed by the Feds against Hassan Nemazee, the top Hillary Clinton fundraiser who was charged this week with fraudulently trying to getting a $74 million loan from Citigroup.

The gist of Nemazee's alleged scheme, begun in 2006, was relatively simple: In order to convince Citigroup that he had sufficient collateral to secure the line of credit he was asking for, he gave the bank false account statements, according to an affidavit signed by an FBI agent on the case. And, says the agent, he forged the names of actual staffers at brokerage houses where he claimed those accounts were housed. He also allegedly included phone numbers and addresses for what he claimed were the brokerages, but was in fact a virtual office he had set up.

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Topics: Citigroup, Hassan Nemazee

Hillary Clinton

Top Clinton Fundraiser Charged With Defrauding Citigroup

Zachary Roth | August 25, 2009, 3:41PM

Hassan Nemazee

The top fundraiser for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has been charged with fraudulently applying for a loan of over $74 million from Citigroup.

Federal prosecutors allege that Hassan Nemazee, a New York businessman who was national finance chair for the Clinton campaign, "submitted, and caused to be submitted to 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. In fact, those were fraudulent and forged documents."

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Topics: Citigroup, Hassan Nemazee, Hillary Clinton

Citigroup

The Fight Over Your Student Loans Reducing Banks To "Pornography"

Moe Tkacik | May 11, 2009, 2:22PM

Last Friday Citigroup email-blasted borrowers of its student loans entreating them to write Congress and sign online petitions saying they opposed Barack Obama's plan to do away with the private student loan business in the name of "consumer choice."

We thought the email was funny because, sort of like AIG's bailout-funded legal battle to reclaim $329 million penalties it paid the IRS, it was a case of a company transparently working to undermine the agenda of its parent company the U.S. Treasury. But it gets better!

As it turns out, Citigroup's biggest competitor in private student loans, Sallie Mae, sold out the rest of the industry last month by agreeing to go along with the Obama Administration's plan. Two weeks ago the company told analysts that while it did not intend to be a "Thanksgiving turkey for the government" it was content shifting its strategy from the lucrative government-subsidized lending business that made its CEO Al Lord a centimillionaire many times over to being a fee-for-service government contractor. It circulated some suggested changes to the Obama proposal and left its smaller competitors, like Citigroup's Student Loan Corporation and First Marblehead Corporation to fend for themselves.

In a conference call with analysts last month, Lord said his reasoning for the change of heart was simple: student loans were not as profitable as they once had been, following a string of conflict-of-interest scandals in 2006 and 2007 that galvanized support around a series of cuts in the federal subsidies bankers received for extending such loans -- so charging the government to service the loans was a better business to be in. "I don't think there's anyone in this building...that's not a capitalist," Lord told an analyst. The trade group representing Citi and other private lenders, however, the Consumer Bankers Association, had some harsh words for this rationale in a Washington Post story this morning.

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Topics: Citigroup, Sallie Mae

AIG

Warren: Fire Top Management At AIG and Citi

Zachary Roth | April 7, 2009, 5:25PM

We're late to this, but it looks like Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law professor who chairs the Congressional Oversight panel for the TARP funds, is upping the ante.

After several months of raising the alarm about the Treasury Department's failure to attach strings to the bailout funds, to little apparent effect, Warren will issue a hard-hitting report this week that broadly indicts the Obama administration's approach to the financial crisis, reported the British paper The Observer over the weekend.

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Topics: AIG, Bailout, Citigroup, Elizabeth Warren, Financial Crisis, Treasury Department, Wall Street

Wall Street

The TARP Email Trail: AIG And Citi Execs Clueless And Arrogant, Kashkari "Tough To Watch"

Moe Tkacik | March 27, 2009, 3:48PM

Following a few months of courtroom wrangling, Fox Business News has obtained a much-redacted 10,096 pages of Treasury Department documents on the bank bailout. Scrubbed of "proprietary" information and what would presumably be their most explosive revelations, the communiques exchanged between the Bush Administration and executives at Citigroup and AIG read something like "Dumb and Dumber and I Know It Seems Impossible But Even Dumber Than That." The first role would be played by the TARP overseer and cheerleader for the Italian automobile industry Neel Kashkari, whose aides nervously emailed one another as they watched him testify before the House Financial Services Committee on what exactly he was doing with their money.

Nason: How's it going?

Zuccarelli: Bad. Serious questions, too, not "chump" type questions. They're going to start to break Neel down soon, I'm getting worried he's going to start snapping.

Nason: This AIG stuff is tough to watch.

Zuccarelli: They killed him on exec comp. He didn't know answer.

But we wouldn't know how to answer, either, if we'd written the law that appropriated the trillion or so taxpayer dollars that paid bonuses to the clueless executives at AIG and Citigroup: