Belgian Firm to Return Funds in Fraud Case

ACLN, a defunct Belgian company, along with its former chief executive and an affiliated firm, will return $27.6 million that U.S. regulators allege derived from fraud, officials said Thursday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission had accused ACLN, which once maintained an investor relations office in Los Angeles, of inventing a phony automobile shipping business and inflating company revenue.

The SEC said it planned to distribute the money in the settlement to people who were defrauded by ACLN between 1998 and 2001. The money is in frozen European bank accounts, the SEC said in a statement.

ACLN, its chief executive, Abderrazak “Aldo” Labiad, and the affiliated firm, Scandinavian Car Carriers, neither admitted to nor denied wrongdoing.

ACLN’s shares fetched as much as $50 on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2001 before collapsing a few months later. The company was delisted in March 2002.