By Jonathan Stempel and Chris Prentice
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Vince McMahon, the former World Wrestling Entertainment chief executive, settled U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charges he concealed from the company’s board two settlement agreements worth $10.5 million with women who had potential claims against him.
The SEC said on Friday that McMahon’s actions circumvented WWE’s internal accounting controls, and led to the company’s restating its financial statements in August 2022.
McMahon, a 79-year-old billionaire, did not admit wrongdoing in agreeing to pay a $400,000 civil fine and reimburse $1.33 million to WWE.
In a statement, he said the accord ends nearly three years of investigations by various government agencies.
“The case is closed,” McMahon said. “In the end, there was never anything more to this than minor accounting errors with regard to some personal payments that I made several years ago while I was CEO of WWE. I’m thrilled that I can now put all this behind me.”
McMahon stepped down as WWE’s chief executive in 2022, as the wrestling company was investigating accusations mirroring those in the SEC case.
According to the SEC, one of the settlement agreements called for McMahon to pay $7.5 million to an independent contractor who said he assaulted her and derailed her career after she refused to have a sexual relationship with him.
The other called for McMahon to pay $3 million to a former WWE employee in exchange for her silence about their relationship between 2019 and 2022, the SEC said.
Neither woman was identified by name by the SEC.
Last January, former WWE employee Janel Grant sued McMahon for sexual assault and trafficking, saying he pressured her to sign a nondisclosure agreement in exchange for $3 million, after his wife Linda McMahon learned about their relationship, but paid just $1 million.
That case is still pending, court records show. Vince McMahon has denied Grant’s allegations.
WWE’s restatement came after an internal investigation identified $20 million in payments by McMahon between 2006 and 2022 that should have been recorded as expenses.
The SEC said the failure to record various payments caused WWE to overstate net income by 8% in 2018 and 1.7% in 2021.
McMahon resigned last January from wrestling giant TKO Group, created from the 2023 merger of WWE and the parent of Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC.
TKO, based in Stamford, Connecticut, did not immediately respond on Friday to requests for comment.
Linda McMahon has also served as WWE’s chief executive. President-elect Donald Trump chose her to become secretary of the Department of Education. McMahon and her husband are separated, her lawyer has told media.
(Reporting by Joanthan Stempel and Chris Prentice in New York; Additional reporting by Rami Ayyub and Katharine Jackson in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
