WASHINGTON (AP) – The Securities and Exchange Commission filed charges Monday against Delphi Corp. and several of its former top executives, accusing the auto parts supplier of committing accounting fraud to hide the poor conditions of its finances.

The SEC, in a filing in federal court in Detroit, charged seven former Delphi executives, including former CEO J.T. Battenberg, and two outsiders with participating in or aiding and abetting the company’s fraud.

The government said in a statement that the Troy, Mich.-based company had settled its charges and will not face penalties because of its cooperation with investigators.

The agency also said it had settled charges with six of the people named in the complaint, including former Chief Financial Officer Alan Dawes, who agreed to pay $687,000 in fines and restitution.

Delphi, the nation’s largest auto parts supplier, filed for bankruptcy protection in October 2005. Resolving the SEC investigation could help the company move closer to an emergence from bankruptcy next year.

Delphi Chairman and CEO Robert S. “Steve” Miller said the auto supplier had “cooperated fully with the commission’s investigation and will continue to do so. We are pleased to put the SEC investigation behind us and consider this settlement an important step in our transformation process.”

Delphi settled the charges “without admitting or denying the commission’s allegations,” the SEC said.

The SEC investigation found that Delphi had manipulated its earnings from 2000 to 2004, using several illegal schemes to boost its earnings, including the concealment of a $237 million transaction in 2000 with its former parent company, General Motors Corp., involving warranty costs.

Linda Chatman Thomsen, director of the SEC’s division of enforcement, said the facts were “particularly troubling because of the number of fraudulent schemes engaged in by Delphi, the length of time over which they occurred, and the number of Delphi employees, including senior officers, who carried out the schemes.”

The SEC said its investigation was continuing.

Battenberg, in a statement, said the SEC complaint against him “relates entirely to a settlement of disputes between Delphi and General Motors in September 2000 that I believed and continue to believe was entirely lawful and proper.”

“I fully cooperated with Delphi and with the SEC in their investigations of this matter both before and after my retirement, and am disappointed to say the least that this lawsuit has been filed,” Battenberg said. “I deny the allegations against me and will ask that the court hear the evidence at the earliest possible time.”

Battenberg, Delphi’s founding chairman after it was spun off from General Motors Corp. in 1999, announced his retirement in February 2005, shortly before the SEC probe was announced.

In addition to Battenberg and Dawes, the SEC complaint also named Paul Free, Delphi’s former controller and chief accounting officer; John Blahnik, Delphi’s former treasurer and senior vice president; Milan Belans, Delphi’s former director of capital planning and pension analysis; Catherine Rozanski, Delphi’s former director of financial accounting and reporting; and Judith Kudla, former director of finance in Delphi’s information technology department.

Others charged include: Scot McDonald, who works for a Texas-based information technology company and formerly serve as manager of U.S. GAAP Consulting and Reporting; B.N. Bahadur, who led a Michigan-based private management consulting company.

In addition, the complaint charged four other people with aiding and abetting Delphi’s reporting and books-and-records violations: Atul Pasricha, Delphi’s former assistant treasurer; Laura Marion, Delphi’s former director of financial accounting and reporting; Stuart Doyle, a former client executive supporting the Texas IT company’s relationship with Delphi; and Kevin Curry, a former client executive supporting the Texas IT company’s relationship with Delphi.

In addition to Dawes, the SEC reached settlements with Pasricha, Bahadur, Marion, Doyle, and Curry. Bahadur agreed to pay back nearly $490,000 in ill-gotten gains and interest and pay an $80,000 penalty; Pasricha agreed to a $55,000 penalty; Marion and Doyle agreed to pay penalties of $40,000 apiece and Curry agreed to pay a $25,000 penalty.

Attorneys for Blahnik, Belans, Kudla and McDonald didn’t immediately return telephone calls seeking comment.

David DuMouchel, Rozanski’s lawyer, said they were “very disappointed that the (SEC) filed the action against Cathy but now we’ll just proceed to defend” her.

Free’s attorney, Richard Rossman, had no immediate comment.

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AP Business Writer Marcy Gordon in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

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On the Net:

Securities and Exchange Commission: http://www.sec.gov

Delphi Corp: http://www.delphi.com

AP-ES-10-30-06 1604EST