A U.S. federal judge rejected a $33 million settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Bank of America Corp., saying Sept. 14 the SEC's accusations of inadequate disclosure by the bank over bonuses paid at Merrill Lynch must go to trial.

Separately, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office is preparing to file charges within the next couple of weeks against several high-ranking executives at BofA, claiming they failed to disclose details about the bank's acquisition of Merrill Lynch, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

The ruling in the SEC case comes one month after the agency and BofA thought they had put a thorny issue behind them, and leaves the SEC with the task of mounting a case against BofA over one of the most sensitive issues of the financial crisis — executive pay on Wall Street.

The SEC announced Aug. 6 that it had settled its civil charges against BofA, which agreed to buy New York investment bank Merrill Lynch last year, without the bank admitting or denying guilt in the case. BofA has said it didn't violate disclosure rules.

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, in his ruling, found that the settlement "suggests a rather cynical relationship between the parties: The SEC gets to claim that it is exposing wrongdoing on the part of the Bank of America in a high-profile merger, the bank's management gets to claim that they have been coerced into an onerous settlement by overzealous regulators. And all this is done at the expense, not only of the shareholders, but also of the truth."