- Key insight: Ex-Citi executive Julia Carreon is accusing the bank of maintaining a sexually discriminatory culture that ultimately forced her to resign from her job.
- What’s at stake: Carreon’s lawsuit accuses one of Citi’s top leaders, Andy Sieg, of “unrelenting and egregious sexual harassment” that ultimately “poisoned” her reputation. The charges are the second time in six months that Sieg has been accused of bad behavior in the workplace.
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Forward look: Citi denied the allegations, saying the lawsuit “has absolutely no merit.” Late Tuesday, the bank filed a petition to compel arbitration, arguing that Carreon must adhere to the bank’s employment arbitration policy.
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Update: This story has been updated to include Citi’s legal response and comments from Carreon’s attorney.
A former Citi executive has filed a lawsuit accusing the megabank of race and sex discrimination, including sexual harassment by one of the bank’s top leaders.
Julia Carreon, who was the global head of platform and experiences for Citi Wealth when she resigned during the summer of 2024, filed the lawsuit Monday in federal court in Manhattan.
The complaint accuses Andy Sieg, the head of Citi’s wealth business, of “spurr[ing] on a campaign of unrelenting and egregious sexual harassment, manipulation and grooming” of Carreon, in part by suggesting to colleagues that the two were in a sexual relationship. It also alleges that Sieg “poisoned” Carreon’s reputation, leading her to quit following a “deeply misogynistic” internal investigation by Citi’s “weaponized human resources department.”
Sieg is not named as a defendant in the case.
On Tuesday, Citi responded to the suit by filing a petition to compel arbitration. The petition was filed in federal court in Texas, where Carreon resides and where she lived while employed by Citi.
In the petition, Citi alleges that Carreon never raised race or sex discrimination concerns while she was employed by the bank, which has an employment arbitration policy. According to the petition, “to avoid her agreement to arbitrate all employment-related claims … [Carreon] has fabricated a legally infirm and patently false theory that Mr. Sieg sexually harassed her.”
The move to file a petition asking a Texas court to direct a New York judge to send the case to arbitration “is an unprecedented, bizarre legal maneuver to try to intimidate and embarrass” Carreon, Linda Friedman, lead counsel for Carreon, told American Banker Tuesday.
Carreon worked at Citi for about three years. She alleges that her troubles began prior to Sieg’s hiring.
According to Carreon, Citi executives sidelined her shortly after she was hired in 2021 to help transform the bank’s digital client experience.
Carreon, who is a person of color, alleges that she was subjected to open hostility, disrespect and contempt from certain white male employees, and eventually was pushed out of the job by male leaders at the bank.
In a LinkedIn post on Monday, Carreon said that her lawyer “spent 14 months trying to resolve this matter privately, but Citi’s lawyer said he welcomed a public match.” Carreon joined Citi after a 14-plus year career at Wells Fargo, where she was the chief digital officer of the private bank.
“It’s a life-altering decision to come forward, one no woman takes lightly,” Carreon wrote on LinkedIn.
“But what happened during my three years at Citi, culminating in May 2024, tapped into something non-negotiable. … Truth is worth defending, even when it costs you.”
In a statement, Citi denied the allegations, saying that “this lawsuit has absolutely no merit and we will demonstrate that through the legal process.”
Citi is currently a defendant in another lawsuit brought by Ardith Lindsey, a managing director in the bank’s global equities market division who is currently on leave. Lindsey alleges that she has experienced a hostile work environment and unlawful discrimination, and was coerced into a relationship with a boss. When the suit was filed, Citi vowed to defend itself against Lindsey’s allegations.
The latest charges mark the second time in six months that Sieg, who reports to Citi CEO Jane Fraser, has faced accusations of bad behavior in the workplace.
In August, Bloomberg reported that Sieg was the subject of an investigation conducted by an external law firm related to his treatment of colleagues. According to Bloomberg, at least six managing directors at Citi filed human resources complaints against him, and some of the accusations involved his treatment of Ida Liu, Citi’s former global head of private banking who resigned from Citi about a year ago.
Liu, who was one of Citi’s highest-ranking female executives when she left the bank, has since been hired by HSBC to be the CEO of its private bank.
Sieg, who Citi hired away from Bank of America’s wealth business in 2023, is one of Fraser’s most high-profile recruits since she took over as CEO nearly five years ago. In an interview with American Banker about a week before the Bloomberg article was published, Fraser said Sieg was “doing a super job” in overhauling the wealth business.
Fraser, who was American Banker’s Most Powerful Women in Banking in 2025, has since said that she was “comfortable” with the outcome of the external investigation into Sieg.
In the lawsuit filed Monday, Carreon said she was promoted shortly after Sieg arrived at Citi in the fall of 2023. Sieg “immediately showered Carreon with praise, telling her that he heard she was a ‘rockstar’ and that she had been mistreated” by Japan Mehta, a former chief information officer in Citi’s wealth division, the complaint said.
But Sieg’s “limited professional support for Carreon came at a price too steep for her to bear,” according to the filing, which listed several alleged instances of sexual harassment, including sexual innuendos that left Carreon feeling “debased and humiliated.”
“When she finally appeared to gain a champion for her work, Head of Wealth Andy Sieg, Citi’s discriminatory and sexually harassing culture reduced her to being perceived as a sex object — that she could not possibly have reached those heights on her own merit, but must have been sleeping with her boss, which was untrue,” the lawsuit states.
The suit takes aim at Citi’s human resources department, which has been run by Sara Wechter since 2018. It accuses the department of conducting “a misogynistic investigation” into Carreon’s relationship with Sieg, with Carreon being the only one of the two to be investigated.
“Consistent with its long history of discrimination and sexual harassment, Citi HR, purportedly believing there to be a sexual relationship between a female subordinate and a male executive with the power to fire her, chose only to investigate the woman, after Sieg had sexually harassed her for months on end, and Citi had condoned a sexually harassing culture,” the filing alleges.
Carreon has “struggled to find new employment” in the time since she left Citi, according to the complaint. She is currently a contractor for Veritas Wealth Partners, serving as a strategic advisor, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Carreon also plans to file a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the lawsuit said.
