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A former Citigroup managing director is suing the bank over claims its human resources department forced her out after she was sexually harassed by one of the bank’s most senior executives, Andy Sieg.
Julia Carreon, who was Citi Wealth’s global head of platform and experiences before she left the bank in August 2024, claimed in a lawsuit filed on Monday that Citi had a “discriminatory and sexually harassing culture”.
She alleged the bank’s “weaponised” HR department sought to push her out. Sieg heads the bank’s wealth business.
“With the help of HR and Citi’s discriminatory and sexually harassing culture, Sieg poisoned Carreon’s reputation within Citi and ultimately forced her to leave the firm,” the complaint said.
It added the bank “subjected Carreon — not Sieg — to a misogynistic investigation into their professional relationship”.
The filing comes after Citi completed an investigation into alleged bullying by Sieg earlier this year. The probe was conducted without interviewing some of the most senior women who had raised concerns, the FT previously reported.
The bank has stood by Sieg, who previously led Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch and is one of chief executive Jane Fraser’s most high-profile hires.
Carreon has accused Citi’s HR department of unfairly investigating her over a “baseless” bullying claim and conducting a one-sided investigation into the alleged inappropriate relationship in which “HR representatives posed questions as pre-determined conclusions”.
Carreon claimed she was also questioned about leaking information to the press, which she said she had been asked by Sieg to do on his behalf.
Carreon’s lawsuit alleged Citi’s HR investigation followed Sieg’s “unrelenting and egregious sexual harassment, manipulation and grooming”. This included calling and texting her multiple times a week, including from a burner phone, and sharing confidential information “because, he said, there was no one else he could talk to”.
Sieg “talked with sexual undertones, for example, calling her at night and telling her . . . he [had been] ‘glazing her so hard that it made him feel dirty’, or words to that effect”, the filing added.
The complaint also alleges Sieg insinuated to colleagues that he and Carreon were having an intimate relationship, including by showing physical proximity and saying the two shared a secret song.
She says in the complaint that she was told by HR that only she, not Sieg, was under investigation for the alleged inappropriate relationship, while a senior male executive separately said it was a “rite of passage to be investigated for having an affair”, or words to that effect.
This, claims the filing, was emblematic of Citi’s “discriminatory and sexually harassing culture, where the rare women who approached the inner circle of executives were presumed to have reached those positions through inappropriate relationships”.
Citi is the most high-profile global bank to be led by a woman. Fraser has sought to simplify and modernise the bank, including with a plan launched in early 2024 to cut 20,000 jobs by the end of this year.
Citi did not immediately respond to a request for comment.