Citadel Securities Alums Accuse Firm of Harassment and Intimidation
- Ex-executives were sued over high-frequency crypto startup
- Firm wants to scare workers into staying on, court filing says
A pair of former Citadel Securities employees asked a federal judge to throw out a trade secrets lawsuit, arguing their new firm operates in a market that their old one said it would never enter.
Citadel Securities sued former European executives Leonard Lancia and Alex Casimo in New York in May, saying they started raising capital for their firm, Portofino Technologies, while they still had access to Citadel Securities proprietary information. In court filings Tuesday, Lancia and Casimo said they left their jobs in March 2021 because they were unhappy with the “limited resources and the low priority” that had been given to their business and were considering starting a company that would use high-frequency trading to make markets in cryptocurrency - something Citadel had “publicly and vehemently vowed it would not do.”