Ex-Enron Accountant Settles SEC Charges

Welsey Colwell, former chief accountant for Enron Corp.’s energy trading unit, agreed to pay $500,000 and to be barred from serving as a corporate officer to settle Securities and Exchange Commission allegations that he helped to manipulate Enron’s earnings.

Colwell, who neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing, will keep cooperating with a 2-year-old joint investigation by the SEC and Justice Department into accounting fraud at Enron, the world’s largest energy trader before it filed for bankruptcy protection.

The SEC alleged that Colwell played a role in manipulating Enron’s earnings by producing bogus financial results.