12:40 PM EDT, 08/19/2024 (MT Newswires) -- Billionaire investor Carl Icahn and his investment company, Icahn Enterprises ( IEP ) , agreed to a combined $2 million settlement with US regulators to resolve charges of failing to disclose stock pledges.

Icahn, who is the controlling shareholder in Icahn Enterprises ( IEP ), allegedly pledged about 51% to 82% of the firm's securities as collateral to obtain billions of dollars in personal margin loans, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Monday. The billionaire carried out this practice from at least the end of 2018 through the present, with the investment firm failing to disclose these pledges as required in its Form 10-K until Feb. 25, 2022, according to the SEC.

Icahn Enterprises ( IEP ) and Icahn agreed to pay $1.5 million and $500,000, respectively, to settle the charges, the SEC said. In a regulatory filing, Icahn Enterprises ( IEP ) said it neither admitted nor denied the SEC's allegations, but agreed to pay the fine. The firm's stock was down 6.5% in midday trading.

"These disclosures would have revealed that Icahn pledged over half of (Icahn Enterprises ( IEP ))' outstanding shares at any given time," said Osman Nawaz, chief of the SEC enforcement division's complex financial instruments unit. "Due to both disclosure failures, existing and prospective investors were deprived of required information."

Last year, short-seller Hindenburg Research claimed that Icahn Enterprises' ( IEP ) net asset value was inflated and that the firm had a "Ponzi-like" economic structure. The current settlement makes no such claims, Icahn said in an emailed response to MT Newswires.

"Hindenburg's modus operandi, which is to publish scurrilous and unsupported allegations, did damage to IEP and its investors," according to Icahn. "We are glad to put this matter behind us and will continue to focus on operating the business for the benefit of unit holders."

The US government "found absolutely no fraud" or "impropriety" in its dividends, Jonathan Streeter, outside counsel to IEP at Dechert LLP, said in the emailed statement. The investment firm "corrected" the disclosure violation in February 2022, more than a year before the Hindenburg report and the beginning of the government investigation, according to Streeter.

Hindenburg in 2023 claimed that Icahn had pledged about 60% of his IEP holdings for personal margin loans.

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