Did Citibank (NYSE: C) Help Lead Lehman Brothers to Bankruptcy?

A new court-ordered report indicated that Citibank (NYSE: C), along with JP Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) may have helped cause the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Inc by changing guarantee agreements and demanding more collateral.

The 2,200 page report was filed on Thursday in Manhattan Federal Court by bankruptcy examiner Anton Valukas. In the report, Valuka commented that “The demands for collateral by Lehman’s lenders had direct impact on Lehman’s liquidity.” He continued, “Lehman’s available liquidity is central to the question of why Lehman failed.”

The new report said that former Lehman Brothers Executive Officer Richard Fuld and other executives made misleading statements about the bank’s finances and that Fuld was “at least grossly negligent.”

New-York based Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008 and with $639 billion in assets.

Citibank spokeswoman Danielle Romero-Apisolos made a statement to the press that the company is reviewing the report and said that a preliminary analysis shows that the examiner “has not identified any wrongdoing on Citi’s part.”

Valukas spent more than a year and $38 million to produce the report. He interviewed more than 100 individuals, including U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox. Valukas also scrutinized more than 10 million documents and 20 million pages of email from Lehman Brothers, according to a U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York.

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