The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has issued a Cease and Desist Order against Clear Fork Bank, N.A., headquartered in Albany, Texas, directing the bank to correct longstanding deficiencies in its Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money-laundering compliance programme. The action, recorded under Docket No. AA-ENF-2024-82, was made public by the OCC on 21 November 2024 and follows an earlier formal agreement the OCC had reached with the bank in 2021.
The 2021 formal agreement had required the bank to remediate identified BSA/AML weaknesses. The OCC found that the deficiencies had not been sufficiently corrected.
BACKGROUND
The Bank Secrecy Act requires financial institutions to maintain risk-based programmes for detecting and reporting suspicious activity. When the OCC entered into its formal agreement with Clear Fork Bank in February 2021, the bank was already deemed to have fallen short of those standards.
A Cease and Desist Order carries enforceable legal weight. Under the order, Clear Fork Bank's board of directors and senior management are legally obligated to implement specific corrective measures enumerated by the OCC, and the regulator retains authority to seek civil money penalties or initiate further enforcement actions should compliance remain insufficient. The order was issued with the bank's consent, settling the OCC's cease-and-desist proceedings.
Until the OCC is satisfied that the institution's BSA/AML framework meets statutory and regulatory standards in full, the cease-and-desist will remain in force.
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