Author: Vorskanian Yeghisabet

Earlier this month, however, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that Citibank had been discriminating against Armenian American credit card applicants and targeting customers with last names that ended in “ian” and “yan.” Arminak called Smbatian back.

“You were right,” Arminak recalled saying.

They began working on a class-action lawsuit.

Smbatian and her husband, Karl Asatryan, allege in the recently filed lawsuit that Citibank and its parent company, Citigroup, caused them financial troubles by damaging their credit and forcing them to open new bank, credit card and business accounts, as first reported by the Los Angeles Times. The lawsuit, filed Nov. 17 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, says the plaintiffs felt mortified after “being treated like criminals” because of their “ethnicity and ancestry.”

“I had so much trust in Citibank,” Smbatian, 42, told The Washington Post. “And then one day, just like, out of the blue, they just basically [upended] my life completely.”

A Citi spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit but said in a statement to The Post that the company has added protocols to prevent “any recurrence of such conduct.”

“Regrettably, in trying to thwart a well-documented Armenian fraud ring operating in certain parts of California, a few employees took impermissible actions,” the statement said. “While we prioritize protecting our bank and our customers from fraud, it is unacceptable to base credit decisions on national origin. We sincerely apologize to any applicant who was evaluated unfairly by the small number of employees who circumvented our fraud detection protocols.”

Smbatian and Asatryan, 45, both immigrated from Yerevan, Armenia, as teenagers in the late 1990s in hopes of building careers and families in the United States. They met in California in 2001 and started a real estate agency based in the Sherman Oaks area in Los Angeles the next year.

After Smbatian and Asatryan got married in 2003, they found a Citibank branch within a mile of their home in the Van Nuys neighborhood in Los Angeles. They opened credit card and banking accounts, as well as a business account to process checks from customers and landlords.

They had not encountered banking problems until they heard rumors in late 2021 that Citibank was closing Armenian Americans’ accounts. Smbatian said she figured the account holders had made mistakes and that she wouldn’t be impacted.

But Smbatian received her own letter from Citibank in February 2022, according to the lawsuit, and Asatryan got a similar letter a few months later. Despite repeated calls and emails to the bank, Smbatian and Asatryan said they never received an explanation about their account closures and instead blamed each other for possibly making a mistake.

Recently, however, a government agency found the bank was at fault. Between 2015 and 2021, Citi targeted Armenian Americans applying for Citibank-affiliated credit cards for retailers including Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and Costco, according to a consent order the CFPB filed against Citibank on Nov. 8. Citibank singled out applicants living in or near Glendale, Calif., one of the country’s largest Armenian communities, the order said.

Citibank scrutinized many Armenian Americans’ credit card applications, requiring additional information, blocking their accounts or simply denying them, according to the CFPB’s order. The order added that Citibank employees called the applicants “Armenian bad guys” and the “Southern California Armenian Mafia,” believing they might commit fraud or fail to pay charges.

Citibank managers instructed employees to not discuss why Armenian Americans’ applications were denied, according to the order. Employees instead made up reasons for denying credit card applications, such as suspected credit abuse, the order said.

Existing account holders were also affected. Smbatian and Asatryan said they were locked out of their accounts 30 days after receiving notice, and they forfeited their spending points and rewards. Checks submitted to their business account were soon denied, they said.

“For a moment, I was losing my mind,” Smbatian said, “because I didn’t know how we were going to handle everything.”

Smbatian and Asatryan, who have five children, withdrew hundreds of thousands of dollars from Citibank. In fear the same thing could happen again, the couple opened accounts at four different banks and rebuilt their credit. Asatryan said he barely slept for about three months, in fear that his credit would never recover.

The CFPB said in a statement that Citi must pay $1.4 million to affected bank customers and a $24.5 million fine. But Arminak said $1.4 million isn’t enough to compensate for the stress and embarrassment her clients have endured. Since filing the lawsuit, Arminak said that more than 100 people have contacted her to share experiences similar to what Smbatian and Asatryan encountered.

Theirs is not the first class-action lawsuit accusing Citibank of discrimination against Armenians. Lead plaintiff Marine Grigorian, an Armenian woman from Granada Hills, Calif., alleged in a lawsuit filed Nov. 10 that she was denied a credit line increase earlier this year.

Smbatian and Asatryan’s lawsuit is requesting damages and attorney fees.

The couple also hope to prevent banks from again targeting customers based on ethnicity, race or religion.

“That’s what I want the most out of this,” Smbatian said. “That’s when I’m going to be like, ‘Okay, justice is served.’”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/11/29/citibank-lawsuit-armenians-discrimination-profiling/

Armenia is on the brink of formulating a new foreign policy. Moscow’s silent acquiescence during September’s one-day war, in which Azerbaijan seized the long-disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, prompting the flight of all Karabakh Armenians, means most Armenians no longer see Russia as an ally, never mind a security guarantor. Armenia is likely to both turn to the West and make overtures toward other major powers, particularly India and Iran.

At the same time, Yerevan will be looking to retain constructive relations with Moscow. And despite the trauma of losing Nagorno-Karabakh, there will be continuing efforts to solve the long-standing conflict with Azerbaijan and normalize relations with Turkey.

For both the Armenian elite and the broader population, events in Nagorno-Karabakh—which they see as nothing short of ethnic cleansing—have destroyed the idea of Russia as a security guarantor: an idea that had been common currency since at least the beginning of the nineteenth century, even becoming a part of the Armenian national identity. Now, however, even if the immediate crisis is resolved, Armenians will never see Russians the same way again.

Of course, there were always Armenians who called for closer ties with the West, including through joining the EU and NATO, but they were outliers until at least the Second Karabakh War in 2020. Even the Velvet Revolution of 2018 that swept Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to power did not alter the elite’s foreign policy outlook. While Pashinyan found common ground with young Western leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, there was no attempt to chart a more pro-Western course. Pashinyan even irritated the United States by sending military doctors and engineers to Syria as part of Russia’s military intervention in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

While the 2020 war revealed Yerevan to be internationally isolated on Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia managed to partially preserve its reputation among Armenians by preventing the total destruction of Nagorno-Karabakh forces or ethnic cleansing there, and deploying peacekeepers. Only when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 did it dawn on Yerevan that the status quo was untenable.

Yerevan began distancing itself from Moscow in the spring of that year, seeking closer ties with the West and expressing a readiness to compromise over Nagorno-Karabakh. There was a growing awareness that something was going to have to give. While the West offered diplomatic support to Armenia during clashes with Azerbaijan in September 2022, Russia pointedly stayed neutral.

Some Armenians, most fatefully the de facto government of Nagorno-Karabakh, remained stuck in the old paradigm, believing Russian peacekeepers were a genuine safeguard against a renewed Azerbaijani offensive. But this year’s one-day war and the ensuing exodus of Karabakh Armenians proved to even the most ardent pro-Russian Armenians that Moscow was either unwilling or unable to protect them.

Russia did not even step in to help Nagorno-Karabakh politicians seen as pro-Russian. As it took over the region, Azerbaijan arrested three former presidents of the self-proclaimed republic—Arkadi Ghukasyan, Bako Sahakyan, and Arayik Harutyunyan—as well as the prominent Russian-Armenian tycoon Ruben Vardanyan. They all remain in jail in Azerbaijan.

Contrary to expectations, the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh did not lead to the fall of Pashinyan. Instead, it has weakened Armenia’s pro-Moscow opposition, and helped shape an emerging consensus that a continued alliance with Russia is impossible.

What would a “post-Russia” Armenian foreign policy look like? The most serious problem, of course, is still the conflict with Azerbaijan and its Turkish backers. Azerbaijani officials have been less aggressive in their rhetoric since the seizure of Nagorno-Karabakh, but President Ilham Aliyev is in no hurry to sign any documents that would normalize relations.

Perhaps counterintuitively, the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh has convinced Yerevan that solving the conflict with Azerbaijan and Turkey is more urgent than ever. Such peaceful rhetoric faces some internal opposition, but most of the Armenian elite believe it is the only option. Any other position would simply lead to a fresh escalation, and another defeat.

Armenian officials have ramped up contact with their Western counterparts, and Yerevan insists it wants to discuss a peace agreement with Baku somewhere in the West—not in Russia. In October, Armenia even signed an agreement with France for the delivery of military equipment.

Still, Yerevan does not want to repeat its past mistakes by relying too much on a single ally. As a result, it is unlikely to limit its search for new partners to the West alone.

The most obvious choice for Armenia when it comes to a non-Western ally is Iran, which has said repeatedly that it supports the territorial integrity of both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Iran has also expressed opposition to an extraterritorial corridor through southern Armenia that would link Azerbaijan with its exclave of Nakhichevan.

The other partner from the Global South that Yerevan is hoping to recruit is India. New Delhi took note of Armenia after the 2020 war, when Azerbaijan was also backed by Pakistan. Ties have grown ever since, up to and including arms deliveries.

None of Armenia’s theoretical new partners can replace Russia as a security guarantor, however. Armenia also remains dependent on Russia when it comes to other issues like energy and transport. It would be naïve to think that the West can simply be a substitute for Russia in all these areas—particularly while wars are raging in Ukraine and the Middle East. Many in Yerevan repeat the mantra: “If we lose Russia as an ally, we must at least ensure it doesn’t become an enemy.”

Unfortunately, any Armenian steps toward the West tend to be perceived as a hostile act in Moscow. And the Kremlin still has plenty of ways to exert influence over Yerevan: it could give the green light to Baku to launch another military operation, halt natural gas exports, or deport ethnic Armenians from Russia, for example.

While such radical measures would harm Armenia, they would not return the country to the Russian fold. Instead, they would only strengthen anti-Russian feeling and intensify Yerevan’s search for new partners.

There are, therefore, considerable grounds to hope that Moscow and Yerevan can overcome their current difficulties and build a new relationship—or at the very least have a civilized divorce. But the history of Russia’s relations with other post-Soviet countries shows that Moscow does not always behave rationally in such matters.