Citibank

Citibank is presented as part of the cross-border financial infrastructure that yakuza could exploit to launder money. The book distinguishes reported allegations about the bank’s customers from its account of the regulatory action against its Japanese operations, while showing that scrutiny did not end with the first penalty.

Regulatory Action

In September 2004, Citibank lost its private-banking license in Japan, in part because it was allegedly being used by the yakuza to launder money. The account frames this as a regulatory response to suspected use of legitimate financial services, rather than as proof that every transaction or customer connected to the bank was criminal.

The narrator adds that Citibank was punished again by the Japanese government in June 2009 for similar problems. That later action gives the earlier license loss a longer institutional aftermath: the concerns described were not confined to a single episode in 2004.

Reported Yakuza Connections

A law-enforcement figure familiar with the investigation identified Saburo Takeshita as one of Citi Japan’s biggest customers. The book describes Takeshita as a corporate blood brother of Tadamasa Goto. Separately, another source claimed that a senior figure in the Yamaguchi-gumi held an account at Citibank under his own name. These are attributed reports, not findings the narrative presents as a complete account of the bank’s customer base.

The named connections make the book’s concern concrete: the alleged exposure was not limited to anonymous corporate accounts or obscure intermediaries. At the same time, the account does not establish that the named customers’ reported relationships alone explain the licensing action; it places them within a broader allegation that yakuza used foreign financial institutions for laundering.

Foreign Banking Context

The book describes foreign banks as useful to yakuza seeking to move or hold money abroad, and treats Citibank as one example in that larger pattern. It also recounts a separate case involving Susumu Kajiyama: a few weeks after the narrator celebrated a reporting success, news emerged that Kajiyama had more than $50 million in a Swiss account with the help of a Japanese employee of Credit Suisse, and the Swiss froze the account. This account is distinct from the allegations concerning Citibank, but the juxtaposition places both institutions within the book’s examination of overseas banking and organized-crime finance.

Narrative Significance

Citibank’s role is brief but consequential in the book’s account of criminal finance. The bank appears not as a yakuza organization, but as a legitimate institution whose services were allegedly put to illicit use and whose Japanese operations faced regulatory consequences. The 2009 penalty extends that point beyond the initial license loss, while the reported customer links show why the narrator treats international banking relationships as part of the story of organized crime, not merely as its distant financial backdrop.