Halliburton Co. secretly changed its accounting practices when Vice President Dick Cheney was its chief executive officer, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday as it fined the company $7.5 million and brought actions against two former financial officials.
The commission said the accounting change enabled Halliburton, one of the nation's largest energy services companies, to report annual earnings in 1998 that were 46 percent higher than they would have been had the change not been made. It also allowed the company to report a substantially higher profit in 1999, the commission said.
The commission did not say that Cheney acted improperly, and the papers released by the commission did not detail the extent to which he was aware of the change or of the requirement to disclose it to investors. The SEC said that Cheney had testified under oath and had "cooperated willingly and fully in the investigation conducted by the commission's career staff."
