Former Enron CFO Settles

McMahon didn't admit to or deny the SEC's claims, but will return $150,000 of allegedly ill-gotten gains and pay a $150,000 fine. He also agreed to a five-year ban on serving as a public-company officer or director, and a three-year ban on providing accounting or financial-reporting work for a public company, the AP reported.

The SEC said McMahon took part in a sham sale of Nigerian power-generating barges to Merrill Lynch & Co., which allowed Enron to inflate its fourth-quarter 1999 earnings by $12 million. Regulators said the Houston company never should have recorded profits from the deal because the risk and reward of owning the barges never passed to Merrill Lynch, thanks to a verbal side agreement made by McMahon and others, the AP reported.

In addition, the SEC claimed McMahon made false and misleading statements to national credit-rating agencies about Enron's financial health, both while serving as Enron treasurer, until March 2000, and after he was named as its chief financial officer, in October 2001, until the company filed for bankruptcy-court protection in December 2001, the AP reported.
-New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants