The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. sued more than a dozen former Silicon Valley Bank executives for “egregious mismanagement” and negligence that allegedly led to the bank’s dramatic collapse in 2023 before the agency stepped in to backstop customer accounts.

Former Chief Executive Officer Gregory Becker and ex-chief financial officer Daniel Beck, among others, “ignored fundamental standards of prudent banking” and pursued short-term profit for Silicon Valley Bank’s parent, SVB Financial Group, the FDIC said in a complaint filed Thursday in a California federal court.

The suit comes almost two years after the collapse of SVB, which had assets worth $200 billion and catered mostly to technology investors and startups. It became the biggest U.S. bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis and went into FDIC receivership after the agency said it would insure up to $250,000 of deposits against losses. Now the agency is seeking to recover “billions of dollars in damages” from former SVB executives, according to the complaint.

Attorneys for Becker and Beck had no immediate comment.

SVB’s executives continued buying long-term, fixed-rate securities despite interest rate and security risks, according to FDIC’s complaint. They ignored warnings from regulators over “significant deficiencies with SVB’s management and governance,” the agency said in its suit.

The case is Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation as Receiver for Silicon Valley Bank v. Becker, 25-cv-00569, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).