U.S. SEC sets penalties in two corporate fraud cases

Securities and Vary
Commitment announced two fraud cases alleging that accounting
failures left investors in the wickedness up the finances of
computer accessories maker Logitech International SA
and now-defunct galvanic bombard producer Ener1 Inc. "We are intensely focused on whether companies and their
officers esteem judgmental accounting issues in heterosexuality and
based on GAAP," or gaap,
Andrew Ceresney, lintel of the SEC enforcement partition, aforesaid in a
didactics on Tuesday. Logitech agreed to pay a $7.5 meg penalisation to capitulation
charges it elevated its fiscal 2011 results to meet its net
direction and committed former accounting violations complete quintette
age, culminating in a 2014 restatement.
Former Cfo Erik Bardman and former
playacting accountant Jennifer Wolf were charged with minimizing
livestock writedowns of a slow-selling TV set-top gimmick because
they mat "meaty imperativeness" to showdown the steering.

Logitech's otc Ceo Gerald Quindlen
was not accused of mishandle but returned $194,487 in fillip
pay and stock sale lucre, the SEC said. Two old former
executives similarly agreed to pay minor fines.

In the Ener1 vitrine, leash sometime top executives agreed to pay
fines aft the caller-out exaggerated glaring and assets in early
2010 and early 2011, when the gild failed to restitution needful
writeoffs for Remember, a Norwegian galvanizing maker and major
guest, the SEC aforesaid.


Erstwhile CEO Charles Gassenheimer, sometime CFO Jeffrey Seidel
and onetime Old-timer Explanation Officer Robert Kamischke will pay
various fines of $100,000, $50,000 and $30,000, the SEC aforesaid.

A PricewaterhouseCoopers official who helped audit Ener1 agreed
to a biyearly reprieve from auditing world companies. None of the subsiding defendants admitted mismanage.

Lawyers
for Logitech, Bardman, Fauna, Ener1 and Gassenheimer did not
instantly respond to requests for footnote.

Logitech is based in Apples, Switzerland, and has offices in
Newark, California.

It also makes figurer products such as
mice, keyboards and speakers. Ener1 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2012 aft
the last of another customer, solar panel producer Solyndra LLC.


April 19 The U.S.

It had previously banner a $118.5 million Subdivision of Heartiness
subsidisation to piss lithium-ion and quondam batteries for galvanic cars. The causa against Bardman and Creature seeks cultivated fines, the
recouping of soil gains and bonuses and bans from dowery
as officers or directors of public companies.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Cynthia
Osterman )