A group head in Tech & Data had his team buy an expensive (think thousands of dollars) wedding gift for his 30 year-old new hire, many of whom had never even worked with her.
Fast forward a few months, he relocated her to the US on a visa, and had her promoted to director. If the policy about gifts is not even to raise your eyebrow, consider the context of the reorganization when Citi was chasing cost savings but also supposedly placing the right people in the right roles.
That young person was an HR professional. She picked a sunny location over NJ to do secretarial chief of staff type work. Her job content evolved to product administration as the reorg came closer but none of it warranted hiring her into this role over an onshore candidate.
Should I mention that none of the colleagues in the group or dealing with the group understood her role, or found her performance impressive? Many of them found the attitude grating.
So what do you think Citi should do when an Indian Mafia lord does whatever he pleases with the active participation of HR, while others are subjected to Citi’s layoff abominations?
Let’s start by laying out the concerns:
1. The expensive gift is a blatant abuse of power. It signals a “pay-to-play” or cult-of-personality dynamic within that group head’s team.
2. Sponsoring a visa and fast-tracking a promotion to Director for someone performing “secretarial chief of staff type work” that does not match the seniority or title represents a potential misuse of immigration compliance and internal leveling frameworks.
3. Forcing cost-saving layoffs on the broader workforce while simultaneously creating or artificially inflating high-level, high-compensation roles for favored individuals is a textbook recipe for employee resentment and legal or regulatory scrutiny.
What a well-governed institution would do:
1. Given their involvement, HR cannot be trusted to investigate impartially. The investigation must be led by Corporate Compliance, Internal Audit, or Legal, looking specifically at the hiring justification, promotion criteria, compensation bands, and visa sponsorship documentation.
2. Investigate the group head for coercing team members into funding expensive personal gifts, which usually violates corporate code of conduct policies regarding conflicts of interest and improper gift-giving/solicitation.
3. Review whether the Director title and responsibilities match the actual day-to-day work being performed. If the role was artificially inflated to justify a visa or higher compensation, it violates internal compensation governance and potentially federal immigration regulations.
4. If the investigation substantiates abuse of power, preferential treatment, and collusion, appropriate disciplinary action—up to and including the termination of the group head and any complicit HR personnel—must be enforced, regardless of the executive’s revenue generation or tenure.
Since the young lady wasn’t the only preferential treatment, Citi has much work to do and little time to sort this out.