US agribusiness giant Monsanto has been handed a civil penalty of $80 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for accounting rules violations related to price rebates for its Roundup herbicide. During fiscal years 2009- 2011, the stock market watchdog said Monsanto booked “substantial” amounts of revenue from Roundup sales that had been boosted by rebate programs but rather than booking related costs in the year they occurred, they waited a year. This made earnings appear greater than they actually were.

The rebates and the accounting irregularities are said to have begun at a time when Monsanto was facing stiff competition from Chinese manufacturers of cheap generic glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup.

Rather than see declining profits, the company launched the rebate scheme to entice retailers and distributors to buy its products despite the higher price and failed to disclose the cost of the campaign in its earning statement, the SEC said.

Under one scheme, Monsanto’s hometown newspaper, the St Louis Post-Dispatch, said a senior sales executive arranged payment of $44.5 million in rebates to two of the company’s largest distributors.

“As a result of the improper accounting, the SEC filing said Monsanto met consensus earnings-per-share estimates for fiscal 2009. In a statement, the commission’s chair, Mary Jo White, called the company’s conduct “the latest page from a well-worn playbook of accounting misstatements.”

The SEC, which first began investigating the company for the accounting irregularities in 2011, said Monsanto repeated the rebate program in 2010 and again improperly deferred the costs until 2011.

While paying the fine, Monsanto did not admit any wrongdoing, even if it did not deny the allegations. The company repeated the rebate program in 2010 and again improperly deferred the costs until 2011, the SEC said. However, it later restated its earnings for fiscal 2009, 2010 and the first three quarters of 2011.

Athough not accused of anything, two of Monsanto’s top executives at the time, CEO Hugh Grant and then-CFO Carl Casale, returned cash bonuses to the company. Grant reimbursed $3.2 billion and Casale nearly $729,000.

The SEC barred two of the company’s accountants, considered to be at the core of the missteps, from practicing before the commission. They were awarded fines of $30,000 and $55,000 respectively. Under the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act, adapted by the US Congress in response to scandals early in the millennium, the financial market oversight authority could have imposed fines against all the executives, though such cases are rare.