On Monday, the Treasury Department said that its first sales of Citigroup stock will cover up to 1.5 billion shares. This is said to total to about 20% of the 7.7 billion shares of Citigroup common stock the government possesses.

It has been said that it got the shares as recompense for the monetary support it offered to the bank at the time of the height of the economic crisis.

In a statement on Monday, Treasury said it plans to proceed with the sales of the Citigroup common stock "in an orderly fashion under a pre-arranged trading plan with Morgan Stanley, Treasury's sales agent".

Brief declaration was not clearly revealed by Treasury as to when the stock sales would start or for what duration the sales would continue.

It has been reported that Citigroup closed Friday at $4.86 a share.

Currently, the Treasury possesses 27% of the firm in return for its investment of $25 billion.

In March 2010, Treasury had declared that it would shortly start selling its Citigroup stock and that it intended to sell the shares over the period of this year.