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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC ") then launched an investigation on the company's acquisition-related payments. The investigation was concluded on 12 July 2012 whereby the SEC charged Huron and two of its former executives with accounting violations that overstated the company's income for multiple years. .
The SEC found that Huron failed to properly record redistributions of sales proceeds by the selling shareholders of four firms acquired by Huron. The selling shareholders redistributed the money to employees at those firms who stayed on to work at Huron as well as other Huron employees and themselves. Because the redistributions were contingent on the employees' continued employment with Huron, based on the achievement of personal performance measures, or not clearly for a purpose other than compensation, Huron should have recorded the redistributions as compensation expense in its financial statements. By failing to do so, Huron overstated its pre-tax income to the public. Gary Burge and Wayne Lipski were found to oversee the transaction. Huron agreed to settle the SEC's charges by paying a $1 million penalty, and Burge and Lipski agreed to pay a total of nearly $300,000 in disgorgement and penalties to settle the charges against them.
This scandal may have it roots back to Huron founding members, which are the former members of the defunct Arthur Andersen LLP, the firm that collapsed in connection with the Enron Corp scandal in 2002. The former CEO of Huron, Gary Holdren was once a senior Andersen partner and a member of its executive committee. It was widely believed that Huron's working culture followed the culture of Arthur Andersen, which emphasized maximizing fee revenue rather than a client's best interests. In other words, they were only looking for the benefit of themselves rather than their duties to the client. .
Huron had built a reputation as an expert on litigation and regulatory issues.