Citibank mistakenly sends ₹7,000 lakh crore instead of ₹24,000 to client: Report

A total of two employees missed the transaction, pointing to a glaring lapse. The incorrect transaction was detected by a third employee about 90 minutes after it was posted.

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Citibank reported the incident as a “near miss” to the US Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, according to the report. The report added that no funds left the bank.

A Citigroup spokesperson told Bloomberg that a transaction of this amount “could not actually have been executed”. “Our detective controls promptly identified the inputting error between two Citi ledger accounts and we reversed the entry,” the spokesperson added.

“Our preventative controls would have also stopped any funds leaving the bank,” they said, adding that the transaction had no impact on the bank or its client.

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A total of 10 near misses of $1 billion or more occurred at Citi last year, according to the FT, citing an internal report. While it’s down from 13 cases in previous year, the report said near misses of greater than $1 billion were unusual across the US bank industry.

Previous near miss

In 2020, the bank had mistakenly sent $900 million to a group of lenders who were fixed in a battle with the beauty company Revlon. In the same year, Citibank was fined $400 million as it failed to address issues in its risk management procedures and internal controls.

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According to New York Times, Citibank’s former CEO Michael Corbat had exited from the firm due to problems with its technology and internal systems. Additionally, Citi was fined $136 million last year too for not making enough progress in fixing its data-management issues.