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Citibank revealed in court filings on Wednesday that the FBI , the EPA , the EPA inspector general , and the Treasury Department have all request that the bank freeze accounts of several not-for-profit and state government agencies .
The accounts were freeze in February , but thenew documentsmake public details that had previously been unknown , including a full list of the not-for-profit under FBI scrutiny .
The monetary resource were disbursed as part of the $ 27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund , which was created by the Inflation Reduction Act , a lawpassed by Congress in 2022 . Of that , the EPA received$14 billion for a National Clean Investment Fund , which ply grants to green depository financial institution .
immature banks apply those pecuniary resource to provide financing for clean engineering projects around the country . startup that have engineering science that are quick to scale commercially were eligible to obtain financing to make projects a reality .
The funding was mostly to be used for loans , which were to be pay back and recycled for future lending . unripened banks tend to have delinquency rate on par with commercial and residential portfolio held by other commercial lenders .
Citibank was selected as the financial factor to administer that money , hold it in business relationship under the names of the awardees . It is also administer a disjoined , $ 6 billion Clean Communities Investment Accelerator plan . The EPA ’s contract bridge with Citibank was in public announced in April 2024 .
The FBI has requested that Citibank piazza 30 - twenty-four hour period administrative frost on accounts restrain by not-for-profit that were recipients of the green bank funding . It also asked the bank to freeze other nonprofit and state administration agency chronicle , include Habitat for Humanity , United Way , the Colorado Clean Energy Fund , and New York State Department of Taxation and Finance .
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Three nonprofits that received green savings bank monetary resource have litigate Citibank , ask the bank to free the money in their write up .
EPA administrator Lee Zeldin has said that the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund does n’t align with the agency ’s priorities and that he has business organisation about fraud , though he has not allow evidence to support that claim .
In a earreach on Wednesday , a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia question a Justice Department attorney representing the EPA .
“ Can you offer any evidence that [ the grant ] was illegal , or evidence of abuse or fraud or bribery — that any of that was improperly or unlawfully done , other than the fact that Mr. Zeldin does n’t wish it ? ” Judge Tanya Chutkansaid .
Judge Chutkan also ordered the Justice Department to provide the royal court with detail about the alleged fraud , “ because I do n’t have the believable evidence that ’s required . ”
Update 3/13/25 : Added details from the Wednesday auditory sense .
