A female broker claims that a “toxic alliance” between her financial services firm and Citigroup meant she was sexually harassed by one of Wall Street’s biggest traders over a four-year period, after both companies allegedly ignored her complaints, according to the lawsuit.
Christine O’Reilly, 31, According to a complaint filed Monday in Manhattan federal court, Citi’s Benjamin Waters allegedly forced his way into her hotel room after a corporate event at a swanky London bar, bombarded her with suggestive phone calls and drunken messages and spread false rumors about the two being involved in a sexual relationship.
According to the lawsuit, when she warned her London-based superiors at TP ICAP about the trader’s obsessive behavior, she was told “to tolerate and seduce Mr. Waters in order to maintain its business relationship with the City.”
She also reported Waters’ conduct to her boss at Citi, Babin Parikh, but to no avail, according to the lawsuit.
“The simultaneous collapse of Citi and ICAP created interconnected and hostile work environments.
Waters, as a City employee, was free to harass ICAP’s O’Reilly
According to the complaint, the company took this action against employees with the knowledge and assistance of ICAP’s senior management.
The lawsuit is the latest sexual harassment scandal to engulf Citi following a series of complaints about the behavior of its executives and how they treated female executives, including a lawsuit filed last year by managing director Ardith Lindsay that is still pending in New York courts.
Waters is not named in O’Reilly’s complaint, but Citi accuses her of allowing “her brokers to obtain improper personal advantages.”
Also named is ICAP and one of its bosses, Janie McCarthy.
But in his lawsuit, O’Reilly describes how Waters, a London-based broker who worked at the bank’s Delta One desk, allegedly first “took an inappropriate personal interest” in O’Reilly in February 2020 at the Ned, an upscale bar and restaurant in London’s financial district.
Waters is accused of making vulgar sexual remarks at a corporate event at a popular club, then chasing her to a hotel and trying to force himself into Ms O’Reilly’s room.
His obsession with WhatsApp and text messages on social media continued throughout 2020 and 2021, according to the complaint.
According to text messages tendered in court, last September O’Reilly posted a series of photos on Instagram, to which Waters allegedly replied: “Nice legs.”
O’Reilly responded: “Ben, what do you want? Just messaging me incessantly because you don’t have a job? You’re not making it clear that you’re not interested at all… what’s wrong?”
She also alleged that Waters, who is from Auckland, New Zealand, continued to make unwanted advances after she reported the matter to her direct supervisor.
One of those bosses, Mr. McCarthy, insisted that the broker “tolerate and entice Mr. Waters to maintain his business relationship with the City,” according to the lawsuit.
Her lawsuit alleges that her supervisors “linked her job duties to the need to tolerate sexual harassment.”
Screenshots of text messages between the two showed McCarthy telling O’Reilly in July 2022 that he “needed to get in the game.”
According to the lawsuit, after O’Reilly blocked Waters on WhatsApp and restricted her from Instagram, McCarthy told her to unblock him.
Waters then allegedly threatened to cut all business ties with ICAP following O’Reilly’s complaint.
“You’re causing us to lose business,” McCarthy messaged him on WhatsApp in September last year after O’Reilly threatened to file a complaint with the company’s compliance department, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit says McCarthy told O’Reilly to “fuck you” during a February conference call and called her “useless.”
She then allegedly wrote in an internal chat, readable by all at her London and New York desks, that O’Reilly was a “joke” and “crazy”.
The Washington Post has reached out to McCarthy for comment.
O’Reilly did not respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment.
She has been on leave from ICAP since March last year, after reporting the four-year-long abuse to the head of human resources.
A Citi spokesman declined to comment but confirmed that two employees named in O’Reilly’s lawsuit no longer work at the bank.
It is unclear when Waters and Parikh left Citi, as their LinkedIn profiles have not yet been updated with the news of their departures.
The Washington Post has reached out to both men for comment.
A TP ICAP spokesperson told the Post: “It is TP ICAP’s policy not to comment on pending litigation.”
