MOSCOW, December 18 (RAPSI) – The US Justice Department plans to file civil fraud charges against Citigroup Inc. and Merril Lynch over the sale of botched mortgage securities before the 2008 financial crisis, Reuters reports on Wednesday.

Civil investigators allege that  tens of billions of dollars in losses may have been incurred when investors bought securities marketed as Citigroup as safe, when the bank had evidence to the contrary.

Additionally, probes against Credit Suisse and Royal Bank of Scotland are in progress.

The onset of the global financial crisis fiveour years ago was precipitated by the creation of financial products based on so-called “subprime mortgages” - home loans to borrowers who could not afford them.

Numerous leading financial institutions reaped enormous profits generating and selling the financial products and were bailed out by the US government with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars when the market collapsed.

Last year, the country’s top five mortgage servicing firms—Citibank, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Ally Financial—agreed to a $25 billion settlement with the federal government over what US Attorney General Eric Holder called “abusive practices” related to foreclosures, including the so-called “robo-signing” of unverified documents.

Bank of America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo were also part of the agreement which promises $3.3 billion in direct payments to eligible mortgage-holders and $5.2 billion in other assistance, such as loan modifications.