In a court filing, the bank said it was informed that the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund was under an active criminal investigation.

In Wednesday’s court filing, the bank said it had temporarily frozen the accounts of climate grant recipients at the FBI’s recommendation. Citibank said it had been informed by the federal government that the Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which issued the grants, was “subject to an ongoing criminal investigation.” This fund was authorized in 2022 through the Inflation Reduction Act and received $27 billion in funding.

Tech Crunch reported that the FBI asked Citibank to freeze several “nonprofit and state government agency accounts, including Habitat for Humanity, United Way, the Colorado Clean Energy Fund, and New York State Department of Taxation and Finance.”