Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Amy G. Elliott Testifying Before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1999
Carmen Segarra, a former Bank Examiner at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, has brought public attention to a little known job function at her former employer – that of the Relationship Manager. The New York Fed is assigned a priority role in oversight and regulation of some of the largest Wall Street banks. Should it be functioning as a tough cop or managing “relationships”?
In October, Segarra, a lawyer, filed a lawsuit alleging that Relationship Managers at the New York Fed, who were assigned to manage the relationship with Goldman Sachs, obstructed and interfered with her investigation of the firm and tried to bully her into changing her findings. When Segarra refused to change her findings, she was fired, according to the lawsuit.
The U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations should pay close attention to the allegations in this lawsuit and open the same type of investigation it conducted in 1999 into the job function of Citibank’s Relationship Managers at its Private Bank.
The scene was set for these hearings, which were conducted on November 9 and 10, 1999, by Senator Carl Levin, who had this to say in his opening remarks:
“Today we are looking at the private bank of Citibank. It is the largest bank in the United States, and it has one of the largest private bank operations. It has the most extensive global presence of all U.S. banks, and it had a rogues’ gallery of private bank clients. Citibank has been private banker to:
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