“Executives and senior management officials at the nation’s largest banks must be held accountable for Bank Secrecy Act violations, Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry said Monday.

“In a speech before the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists in Hollywood, Fla., Curry argued that regulators have allowed individuals at large, complex institutions to wriggle off the hook for BSA violations, instead attributing compliance failures to “the collective decision making of a great many people over a long period of time.”

“That has to be changed,” Curry said. “Management at large banks needs to eliminate these accreted compliance weaknesses so that institutional structural flaws do not become an excuse for a lack of accountability… Shouldn’t we, as bank supervisors, demand that institutions designate and hold senior managers responsible for BSA risk management just as they would for any other activity or line of business?”

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