WASHINGTON - THE US Securities and Exchange Commission said on Tuesday that it had charged Mr Lou Pai, the former chief executive of Enron Energy Services, with improperly selling hundreds of thousands of Enron shares in 2001.

The stock market regulator said Mr Pai sold the shares after being informed that the Enron subsidiary had sustained substantial losses, but before the losses had been reported publicly.

Mr Pai, who has neither admitted nor denied the SEC's charges, has reached a settlement with the SEC under which he has agreed to pay a US$1.5 million (S$2.05 million) fine.

The former Enron high-flyer has also agreed to pay US$30 million in disgorgement of his gains and other related fees relating to the allegedly improper stock trades.

'The Commission has never relented in pursuing fraud committed by Enron's executives, and I am pleased that today's settlement will add another US$25.5 million to the Enron Fair Fund for the benefit of injured investors,' said Ms Linda Chatman Thomsen, the SEC's enforcement chief.

The charges and settlement with Pai come seven years after the collapse of Enron, which once was one of America's biggest energy trading companies.

Enron's 2001 collapse amid an accounting scandal and wide-ranging government and congressional probes into its accounting practices was one of the biggest scandals in US corporate history.

Other former top Enron executives have faced prosecution and been jailed for their roles in trying to cover up the accounting fraud.

Enron's former chief executive, Jeffrey Skilling, is serving a 24-year sentence in a federal prison.

His co-defendant, former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay, was found guilty of fraud and banking violations, but died in 2006 of apparent heart failure before he was sentenced.

Under the settlement announced on Tuesday, Mr Pai is barred from working as an executive or director of a public company for five years. -- AFP

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