Protesters who have been blocking the entrance to Citigroup’s headquarters in New York City for more than a month claim they were shoved by one of the banking giant’s top lawyers in a violent melee recorded on video, but the bank denies any wrongdoing by its employees.
Shocking footage of the incident, obtained by The Washington Post and circulated in edited form on Instagram, shows a man wearing a blue button-down dress shirt and jeans pushing a line of protesters holding up what appear to be black barricades resembling oil pipelines.
The protesters have accused Citi of its ties to the oil industry and, more recently, to the Israeli military during the Gaza conflict, and say it was Arthur Cohn, Citi’s ERISA, compensation and benefits general counsel, who pushed them over the edge.
“There was a loud rallying cry that Citi should divest from fossil fuels,” a protester who was outside the company’s headquarters on the day of the incident told The Post. “Arthur and other employees didn’t like that.”
Protesters claim the two activists seen on video were standing still and chanting slogans while holding down a makeshift barricade, before Cohn shoved one of them into a wall, they say.
LinkedIn said it could not immediately confirm whether the man in the video was Cohn, a Columbia Law School graduate who was a longtime partner at law firm Cleary Gottlieb before joining Citi in 2020.
Citi has denied the allegations and declined to comment on whether the employee seen in the video was Cohn.
“The protester’s story is patently false,” a City spokesman told The Post. “The unedited video shows that she [the protester] “Other individuals were also illegally blocking the doors of our building with large objects, but after our employee was hit by the object, he pushed it out of his way.”
Cohn did not respond to a request for comment.
The NYPD told The Post that it has arrested at least 175 people at Citigroup protests since April on charges including disturbing the peace.
Citigroup issued an internal memo last week urging employees to “remain calm” after pro-Palestinian protesters blocked entrances to the building and shouted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
“We respect the right to protest, but not at the expense of our colleagues’ safety or encouraging others to incite abuse and hatred,” Ed Schuyler, Citigroup’s head of corporate services and public affairs, said in a copy of the memo last week obtained by The Washington Post.
“Simply put, we do not tolerate threats or acts of violence, and we condemn anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and acts of hatred, discrimination and bigotry of any kind,” Schuyler added.
Protesters told the Post that climate activists and pro-Palestinian activists were deliberately blocking employees from entering the building in an attempt to “draw attention” to the City.
“At a time when people all over the world are being inconvenienced, bank employees are just being inconvenienced on their way to work,” they said.
Protesters acknowledged that locking employees out of work at 7am had “increased tensions.”
Several climate groups, including Summer of Heat and Planet Over Profit, have joined the protest.
A Summer of Heat spokesperson previously told The Post that Citigroup has “pumped $396.3 billion into coal, oil and gas projects since the Paris Agreement went into effect in 2016.” Bank Dive Report.
Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian protesters have attacked a financial deal Citigroup purportedly made to help Israel buy fighter jets from the US government.
An internal memo last week said Citi was “proud” to have had a presence in Israel for 30 years, but also said the information about the protesters was false and that loans for military equipment to the United States and its allies required senior-level approval.
A copy of the memo said Citigroup “does not directly finance” biological, chemical or nuclear weapons and that the bank is rarely asked to loan money for military equipment.
