A former executive at telecommunications company Qwest Communications International Inc. will pay $2.1 million to settle civil charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Casey allegedly backdated contracts allowing Qwest to immediately recognize revenue it would not receive until later.
Former senior vice president Gregory Casey will not admit any wrongdoing under the agreement, but would be prohibited from acting as an officer or director of a public company for the next five years. According to the SEC lawsuit, Casey earned nearly $35 million from Qwest between 1999 to 2001, mostly by exercising stock options. Qwest's former finance chief, Robin Szeliga, pleaded guilty to insider trading earlier this month and agreed to cooperate with the SEC's investigation of other company executives. Last year, Qwest agreed to pay $250 million to settle SEC fraud allegations. The SEC has said that the accounting fraud occurred between April 1999 and March 2002, allowing as much as $3 billion in revenue to be improperly reported as recurring.
