The U Securities and Exchange Commission upon Thursday charged former Xerox chief executive Paul Allaire and five other ex-Xerox Corp.

The U Securities and Exchange Commission upon Thursday charged former Xerox chief executive Paul Allaire and five other ex-Xerox Corp. executives with civil securities fraud through accounting methods that the regulator said overstated earnings for the enormous copier maker.

The six men settl the civil suit with a $22 million payment that includes penalties and forfeiting profits, the SEC announced. They did not admit to or contradict the allegations, the SEC said.

"The executive suite should be reserv for those who will reveal the investing public the canon about the company's performance," said Paul R Berger, associate director of enforcement at the federal agency. "That didn't happen here, and Xerox's shareholders were deceived."

In addition to Allaire, those charged were G Richard Thoman, former president and chief operating officer; Barry D Romeril, former chief financial officer; Philip D Fishbach, former controller; Daniel s Marchibroda, former assistant controller; and Gregory B Tayler, former director of accounting policy.

The SEC's complaint, which was filed in U District Court for the Southern District of modern York, accused the ex-officials of using improper accounting orderly dispositions to increase equipment revenue and inflate earnings.

The accounting modes were not disclosed to investors, the SEC said.

Allaire was in Italy and, said a woman who answered the phone at his Norwalk, Conn home

Messages left for Fishbach, of Rochester, NY Daniel s Marchibroda, of Madison, Conn., and Gregory B Tayler, of Toronto, were not immediately returned

Thoman, of Greenwich, and Barry D Romeril, of Norwalk, Conn have unlisted telephone numbers and could not be reached for comment

Christa Carone, a spokeswoman for Xerox in Rochester, NY said the company "completely changed management" in the past sum of two units years.

"These are issues of the past, and the fresh management team is clearly focused forward making progress today," she said.

Xerox headquartered in Stamford, Conn last year agreed to pay a record $10 million civil penalty and revise financial statements back to 1997 to decide federal regulators' allegations of accounting fraud by way of the world's largest copier company.

The SEC su Xerox in federal court in of recent origin York, alleging that the company used a variety of what it called "accounting tricks" and "accounting opportunities" to increase its earnings from some $1.5 billion and conceal its performance from investors.

The SEC said in legal documents Thursday that the former Xerox officials used accounting measures at the fall of the curtain of each financial reporting period from 1997 to 2000 to choke a gap between the company's underlying earnings and its internal targets and those of Wall road analysts.

The lawyer for James Bingham, a former Xerox executive who accused Xerox of firing him for warning executives of accounting irregularities, said the civil lawsuit vindicates Bingham.

Allaire, who is barred for five years from serving as a corporate officer or director, announced he will resign from the boards of shining Technologies Inc. and Priceline.com Inc., the SEC reported Thursday.

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