In the same month, Citibank filed a lawsuit in the US court, hoping to get this huge sum back through legal channels. According to CNN 18, at present, the court that accepted the case has made a judgment. The judge ruled that Citibank lost the case and the lender will not need to return the money.
Citibank spent 3.2 billion?
The lender of this case is Revlon, an old American cosmetics company. Citibank is a lending institution of Revlon, which is responsible for the company's loan repayment and management.
In August 2020, Citibank should have paid interest of nearly $7.8 million to Revlon's lenders, but actually remitted $900 million. According to foreign media reports, Citibank was in the period of system upgrade at that time, and the wrong operation of relevant personnel led to the repayment of loan interest, which was converted into full repayment of loans, and all the 900 million US dollars loans due in 2023 were paid off.
A day later, Citibank found its wrong operation and immediately contacted the lender, hoping that the other party could return the money. Some creditors returned the money, but others refused to return it, including HKTB and HPS. Citibank failed to recover $500 million (about RMB 3.23 billion).
In fact, some lending institutions do not have good relations with Revlon and Citibank. Previously, Revlon has been experiencing continuous performance decline and losses for many years. In 2020, with the aggravation of the epidemic in COVID-19, the financial crisis of Revlon also intensified. The financial report for the third quarter of 2020 released by Revlon shows that during the reporting period, the net sales of Revlon was US$ 477 million, down by 20. 1% year-on-year, of which the net sales of e-commerce increased by 13% year-on-year, accounting for 12% of the net sales during the period, compared with 9% in the same period last year. The net loss was $44.5 million, compared with $44.7 million in the same period last year.
Last year, Revlon cooperated with Anmai Enterprise Consulting Co., Ltd., and if the company's creditors don't accept the restructuring proposal, it may be ready to file for bankruptcy. At this time, a number of creditors have expressed dissatisfaction with debt restructuring, including institutions such as HKTB.
Therefore, the own goal incident of Citibank allowed Revlon's creditors to recover the funds that could not have been recovered.
Italy's foreign exchange is exactly the same as the money it owes.
After the case, Citibank filed a lawsuit, claiming that it had the right to get the money back because of the wrong remittance of cash. Usually the law will support Citibank. According to the laws of New York State, wire transfer is wrong, such as transferring money to the wrong account, so you have the right to get the money back. If you don't return the money and spend it privately, you will bear legal responsibility and even criminal responsibility.
But when the debtor remits the money to the creditor by mistake, it is not supported by the law of New York State. If the beneficiary should have got the money and didn't know the remittance was wrong, he could keep the money. Furman, the judge who accepted the case, ruled that even if Citibank informed the creditors the next day that the connection was wrong, this principle still applied here.
At present, the court that accepted the case has made a judgment. The judge ruled that Citibank lost the case and the lender will not need to return the money.
Revlon's lenders said that they thought Citigroup had remitted the loan interest in advance. After all, the wrong money is exactly what Citigroup owes them, and it is "exactly the same", but it will take a long time for the money to expire.
Among them, Brigade refused to return the remittance from Citigroup. The company once said that Citigroup remitted 654.38+75 million dollars (about RMB1654.38+300 million yuan) to them, but they were not sure whether the remittance was wrong. Robert Leugman, Brigade's lawyer, said that the remittance was exactly the same as the amount owed.
At the same time, the local court said in a judgment of 10 1 page: "As one of the most mature financial institutions in the world, Citibank made an unprecedented mistake, amounting to nearly 1 billion dollars. We don't believe it. "
As lenders, Brigade and HPS are naturally very satisfied with the court's decision. Finn Si Tong, a representative of the two companies, said that Judge Furman's decision was the result of careful consideration and detailed consideration.
But this case is not over yet. Furman ordered creditors to keep the money in an escrow account so that Citibank had time to appeal his ruling.
If Citibank can't get the money back from the original lender, and considering its own mistakes, Citibank may eventually become a new creditor of Revlon.