Vince McMahon, founder and former head of World Wrestling Entertainment, has reached a deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission after being charged with violating federal securities law over settlement agreements made to women over sexual misconduct claims, CNBC reports.
According to the agency, McMahon failed to properly inform the WWE board, as well as the company's accountants, legal department, and auditor about millions of company dollars paid to settle sexual misconduct claims made by two women, $3 million to one and $7.5 million to the other, which the SEC said bypassed the company's internal accounting procedures and led to the WWE issuing “material misstatements” in past financial statements that were later corrected once the company learned of the settlement agreements.
“Company executives cannot enter into material agreements on behalf of the company they serve and withhold that information from the company’s control functions and auditor,” Thomas Smith Jr., the Associate Regional Director in the SEC's Enforcement Division who oversees the SEC’s enforcement program in New York, said in a statement.
McMahon has agreed to settle the charges and pay a $400,000 civil penalty as well as reimburse his former company, WWE, for $1,330,000 in consent with an order that found he violated the Securities Exchange Act, the SEC announced on Friday.
“The case is closed,” McMahon said in a statement to NBC News. “Today ends nearly three years of investigation by different governmental agencies. There has been a great deal of speculation about what exactly the government was investigating and what the outcome would be.
“As today’s resolution shows, much of that speculation was misguided and misleading,” he continued.
“In the end, there was never anything more to this than minor accounting errors with regard to some personal payments that I made several years ago while I was CEO of WWE. I’m thrilled that I can now put all this behind me.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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