Federal regulators have come under fire for failing to hold executives responsible for their involvement in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Last fall, the Securities and Exchange Commission reached a settlement with Angelo R. Mozilo, the former chief executive of Countrywide Financial, to pay a $22.5 million penalty over misleading investors about the financial condition of the giant mortgage lender.

The New York attorney general’s office has brought a civil suit against Kenneth D. Lewis over improper disclosures related to the 2008 rescue of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, of which he was chief executive.

But several investigations into the actions of executives at the American International Group, Lehman Brothers and other financial firms have stalled — especially criminal cases, which have a much higher burden of proof.

The F.D.I.C., meanwhile, has been under intense pressure to recoup as much money as possible on behalf of Washington Mutual bondholders, who were outraged over its sale in September 2008. Critics said the agency moved too quickly to seize the troubled bank, and then allowed JPMorgan Chase to snap up its assets and branches for a mere $1.8 billion. Ever since, they have unleashed a wave of litigation and asked lawmakers to hold hearings about the controversial rescue.

In his statement, Mr. Rotella suggested the lawsuit was a way for the F.D.I.C. to extract a windfall from directors’ and officers’ insurers, which would want to settle any claims.

The F.D.I.C. complaint says that Mr. Killinger and his top lieutenants took “extreme and historically unprecedented risks” as the savings bank plunged headlong into risky mortgage lending near the height of the housing boom. As experienced bankers, they should have tempered this growth strategy and improved risk management systems to reduce potential losses if the real estate market fell, according to the complaint.

Instead, according to the complaint, they ignored the warnings of the bank’s risk managers and sank deeper into the risky subprime lending and hot real estate markets, like Florida and California. Indeed, the complaint lists more than 26 areas in which they acted recklessly, including a failure to put adequate limits on the concentration of mortgages and employee compensation programs that encouraged high loan volume at the expense of loan quality. The complaint quotes Washington Mutual’s own chief risk officer as telling Mr. Killinger, just weeks before it was seized, that the “risk chromosome” was missing from the bank’s DNA.