Info on Citigroup - Bank funding Opinion Polls on NICE 2 - not nice people at all at all!

national | miscellaneous | news report Tuesday September 10, 2002 15:01 by Blisset

Why are These guys running polls in erron - cos they are Globalisers

Someone asked who and why about Citigroup running opinion polls on the NICE Treaty- http://www.indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=11754 - well here is the 'Who' who are running opinion polls on NICE Here in the lovely globalised land of Erron - for the why - try reading article 133 of Treaty of Nice - can't understand it? Never heard of it? That is what Citigroup and Bertie want from you more now than ever. Complete analysis of Article 133 to follow. http://www.corpwatch.org/news/PND.jsp?articleid=69 Citigroup and Mexico http://www.corpwatch.org/bulletins/PBD.jsp?articleid=689 Worlds most destructive bank http://www.iccr.org/issue_groups/finance/feature_citigroup.htm Predatory Lending and financing Three Gorges Dam http://www.iccr.org/products/proxy_book/accountability/burmabus.htm Trouble in Burma

Would you trust these people with your opinions?

From : http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2002/02april/april02corp2.html

“They hid essential information from consumers, misrepresented loan terms, flipped loans and packed optional fees to raise the costs of the loans,” Bernstein charged. “What had made the alleged practices more egregious is that they primarily victimized consumers who were the most vulnerable –– hard-working homeowners who had to borrow to meet emergency needs and often had no other access to capital.”

Citigroup has tried desperately to deflect the legal and public relations problems by suggesting that all the really bad practices had been the work of Associates First Capital before it became a member of the Citi family. The corporation feigned “shock and dismay” that such practices had been going on and urged the Federal District Court in Atlanta to dismiss Citigroup and its consumer finance unit, CitiFinance, from the FTC lawsuit.

Instead of extricating Citigroup and its affiliates from the lawsuit, the dismissal motion dug the hole deeper for the corporation. FTC produced affidavits from a former employee charging that the corporation’s consumer lending affiliate CitiFinancial had engaged in unethical lending practices long before Associates First Capital had been acquired. The court refused to sever Citigroup and its consumer credit affiliate, CitiFinancial from the suit.

According to the FTC complaint, the Associates charged its customers prices that were substantially higher than those available to borrowers in the prime market. The FTC said Associates charged as many as eight points on mortgage loans — each point equaling 1 percent the amount financed — on top of inflated fees.

The FTC said that Associates obtained customers through a wide range of schemes. Among these were the mailing of “live checks” (which automatically triggered a high interest loan when endorsed) and the purchase of retail installment contracts from sellers of consumer goods.

Once ensnared in the Associates network, customers were aggressively solicited to take out new loans and to refinance existing debts by flipping them into a single debt consolidation loan, according to the FTC. The FTC complaint charges that customers were duped in many cases by false statements that debt consolidation loans would lower their monthly payments and save them money. FTC said that Associates trained employees to tell customers there would be no out-of-pocket-fees or up-front out-of-pocket costs when, in fact, the loans came with high points, closing costs and in many cases with costly credit insurance premiums.