HSBC Official to Step Down as Bank Vows to Fix Scandal The top compliance executive for global banking giant HSBC said that he would step down from his post as he testified during a Senate hearing on Tuesday that is examining the global bank's repeated failure to stop illegal foreign transactions. David Bagley, the head of compliance for the British bank since 2002, broke from his prepared testimony to tell the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that "now is the appropriate time for me and for the bank for someone new to serve as the head of group compliance." The subcommittee released a report on Monday accusing HSBC, Europe's largest bank, of serving as a conduit for money flowing into the United States from Mexican drug traffickers and Middle Eastern banks with ties to terrorists. Bagley was one of six HSBC executives who appeared in front of the subcommittee to apologize for the bank's conduct and promise reform. "We have some ways to go to regain the trust of regulators and the public," said Irene Dorner, the chief executive of HSBC's operations in the United States. We're burning the bridges to make sure no one can get back to the way it was before. Dorner is part of the new top management that has been brought in to HSBC since regulators accused the bank of wrongdoing in 2010. Some of the executives at the hearing were at the bank during the period covered by the report, from 2001 and 2010, and were accused of having direct responsibility for some of the short comings. Christopher Lok, who used to be the head of HSBC's banknote's department, was said to have pushed other executives at the bank to reopen the account of a Saudi Arabian bank that was said to have ties to Al Qaeda. During the hearing, Mr. Lok said, "there were some occasions when I communicated with my colleagues in compliance in a manner that was unnecessarily aggressive and harsh. These communications were unprofessional, and I deeply regret them. The head of the subcommittee, Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said he was happy to hear the bank's contrition, but said that accountability "has been significantly missing in this situation." The Senate report also said that HSBC's American regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, had not adequately punished HSBC when it discovered problems at the bank. Thomas Curry, who became the Comptroller of the Currency in April, is going in front of the subcommittee later on Tuesday and is expected to embrace the report's recommendations for changes at the agency. Regulators have recently cracked down on several banks that were accused of not doing enough to stop transactions coming into the United States from countries facing financial sanctions, such as Iran and North Korea. The Senate subcommittee used HSBC as a "case study" for problems it said are widespread in the finance industry.