Citi intends to move for summary judgment dismissing the complaint brought by former FX trader Rohan Ramchandani. This becomes clear from a brief letter submitted by Citigroup Inc., Citicorp LLC and Citibank, N.A. at the New York Southern District Court on August 23, 2022.

Citi informs the Court that it intends to move for summary judgment dismissing the complaint pursuant to Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Citi intends to submit its pre-motion letter to the Court on or before September 14, 2022.

Rule 56. (Summary Judgment) states:

“A party may move for summary judgment, identifying each claim or defense — or the part of each claim or defense — on which summary judgment is sought. The court shall grant summary judgment if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. The court should state on the record the reasons for granting or denying the motion”.

Ramchandani, who was acquitted of charges relating to manipulation of Forex rates in 2018, is accusing Citi of using him as a scapegoat in order to avoid its responsibility. In February 2021, the Court sided with the “FX Cartel” trader and nixed the Citi attempt to dismiss the lawsuit brought by Ramchandani. Now, Citi has to respond to Ramchandani’s complaint.

Let’s recall that, in January 2017, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) obtained a grand jury indictment of Ramchandani and two other traders employed at multiple banks including JP Morgan, Barclays, and the Royal Bank of Scotland. The indictment charged the three traders with participating in a conspiracy to suppress and eliminate competition for the purchase and sale of the Euro/U.S. Dollar currency pair in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act (15 U.S.C. § 1).

The DOJ’s investigation of the banks and their traders began in 2013 amid press reports on potential manipulation in the FX market in chatrooms that were sometimes referred to as the “Cartel,” the “Bandits Club,” the “Dream Team,” and the “Mafia” and involved an antitrust leniency applicant, UBS, that represented to the DOJ that the Traders entered into a conspiracy to engage in anti-competitive conduct.

The DOJ conducted a four-year investigation of the FX market, that included the cooperation of a member of the traders’ chatroom who worked at UBS, the DOJ’s analysis of trading records, expert analysis of trading data, as well as the traders’ chatroom communications.

Based upon the evidence collected by the DOJ, including from UBS and its cooperating trader, and Ramchandani’s participation in the chatrooms at issue, Citi pleaded guilty to one count of a conspiracy to violate the Sherman Act, which included Citi paying a fine of $925 million. Each of the other banks that employed a trader—JPMorgan, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and Barclays—similarly pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the Sherman Act.

After obtaining the indictment of the traders, the DOJ prosecuted and tried Ramchandani and the two other traders before a jury in the Southern District of New York in October 2018. The Traders were each acquitted.

Ramchandani has brought an action, alleging that the DOJ prosecution resulted not from his own conduct, but from Citi’s initiation of his prosecution, based on alleged unspecified “fabricated” evidence it provided to the DOJ.