NEW YORK, July 18 (Reuters) - A former Citigroup

managing director who said she was fired because she refused to

mislead a federal regulator about the bank's risk management

accused Citigroup's ( C/PN ) chief operating officer of intentional

deception, according to an amended lawsuit filed late on

Thursday.

WHAT HAPPENED

Kathleen Martin said Chief Operating Officer Anand Selva

"wanted to misreport Citi's metrics to deceive" the Office of

the Comptroller of the Currency into believing the bank was

complying with its $400 million settlement agreement in 2020

addressing risk management shortfalls.

Martin's amended complaint in Manhattan federal court

repeated the claim that Selva was concerned that reporting

accurate information would "make us look bad."

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT

Martin said a successful misreporting would have also

deceived shareholders and the public, while failure would have

had "enormous legal and financial implications" for the

third-largest U.S. bank, perhaps including "major" new fines.

The amended complaint also added specific illustrations of

compliance shortfalls at Citigroup.

These included the $135.6 million fine that the OCC and

Federal Reserve imposed on July 10 over the bank's "insufficient

progress" in addressing problems identified in 2020.

That fine was the latest blow for Chief Executive Jane

Fraser, who has focused on making Citigroup leaner and made

cleaning up its regulatory failings a top priority.

THE RESPONSE

Citigroup had no immediate comment after market hours.

It has said it fired Martin last September because she

lacked leadership and engagement skills for her job as interim

data transformation chair.

The bank has also said her allegations were untrue, and that

if they were true her whistleblowing was not protected activity

under the federal Sarbanes-Oxley governance law.

WHAT'S NEXT

Citigroup has until Aug. 8 to respond to the amended

complaint. The bank had sought on June 27 to dismiss Martin's

original complaint, but federal law allowed her to amend it

once.

The case is Martin v. Citibank NA et al, U.S. District

Court, Southern District of New York, No. 24-03949.