The lawsuit brought by ex-Citi Forex trader Rohan Ramchandani against his former employer for alleged malicious prosecution continues at the New York Southern District Court. The parties keep arguing about discovery, as indicated by an exchange of letters between Ramchandani and Citi this week.
In a letter filed with the Court on March 18, 2022, Citi says that the former Forex trader is belatedly manufacturing discovery disputes.
Citi explains that, consistent with the Court’s guidance, it has produced, among other things:
- The entirety of its productions to the Department of Justice (DOJ) as well as all of Citi’s communications with the DOJ concerning the FX investigation;
- All of its communications with the United Kingdom Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regarding Ramchandani;
- The documents produced in Plaintiff’s related United Kingdom Employment Tribunal Litigation (the “UK Employment Action”) commenced by Ramchandani for wrongful termination; and
- The documents identified in e-mail searches applying broad terms to eleven custodians, as described in Citi’s December 17, 2021 and January 27, 2022 letters.
In the meet and confers, Ramchandani demanded discovery from sixteen custodians, all of whom were already custodians in one or more of Citi’s prior productions described above. In addition, the plaintiff demanded production of all of Citi’s communications with every “agency and non-governmental entity” that “conducted an FX spot market investigation or made inquiries with respect thereto” anywhere in the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Switzerland, Brazil or South Africa.
Plaintiff’s counsel rejected all of Citi’s offers of compromise and limitations on his requests, stating that he was unwilling to forego a single custodian or government regulator.
Citi says that Ramchandani’s positions are designed to create purported deficiencies where there should be none and foreclose Defendants’ ability to proceed with depositions that have been scheduled.
In this regard, all of the DOJ-related discovery is complete (including the DOJ’s production of documents pursuant to the parties’ respective Touhy requests), and, in light of the broad productions of documents which Citi has made to Plaintiff, there are no additional categories of documents Plaintiff needs in order to proceed with the scheduled depositions (the DOJ deposition is scheduled for March 25, 2022, Ramchandani’s deposition is scheduled for March 31, 2022, and a non-party witness (Jeffrey Feig) is scheduled for April 4, 2022).
Citi argues that Ramchandani fails to put forth a viable basis to compel further document discovery or stay the depositions, and discovery should be permitted to proceed on schedule without the need for a further extension of the discovery cutoff.
Let’s recall that Ramchandani brought this action against Citibank, his former employer. The Complaint alleges one count of malicious prosecution stemming, among other things, from Citi’s disclosure of information about Ramchandani to, and other communications with, the DOJ in connection with an investigation into a purported criminal antitrust conspiracy arising out of Ramchandani’s role as trader in FX spot markets, and specifically the EUR/USD FX Spot market, on behalf of Citi.
As detailed in the Complaint, Ramchandani alleges, among other things, that:
- Citi made materially misleading statements regarding Ramchandani, and provided materially misleading accounts of Ramchandani’s conduct, to the DOJ, which played an actionable role in the commencement of the DOJ’s putative criminal case against Ramchandani;
- Citi knew that the statements and accounts it provided were materially misleading and that Ramchandani had not engaged in criminal antitrust violations; and
- Citi acted with malice, within the meaning of governing law. Including by falsely identifying Ramchandani (whom Citi knew was not culpable for a criminal antitrust violation) as the single purported wrongdoer within Citi, thereby, among other things, diverting attention from other actually culpable conduct within Citi.