Navistar (NYSE:NAV)
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The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board said Wednesday it has fined a Deloitte & Touche partner $75,000 for allegedly helping Navistar International Corp. (NAV) and unit Navistar Financial Corp. avoid restating 2003 financial results.

This marks the second time the U.S. oversight board for public company auditors has ever assessed a civil money penalty against an individual accountant since it was created by Congress in 2002. The other fine was also against a Deloitte partner for signing off on Navistar's erroneous 2003 financial results.

In the latest case, the PCAOB said Chicago-based Deloitte accountant Thomas J. Linden has consented to pay the $75,000 fine without admitting or denying the allegations. He is also barred from being associated with a registered public accounting firm, but can petition the board to be reconsidered in two years. He no longer works for Deloitte, and the company was not named in the proceeding.

A lawyer for Linden declined to comment, and a spokeswoman for Deloitte said the company is "pleased that Mr. Linden resolved this matter with the PCAOB."

According to the PCAOB, Navistar Financial discovered in 2003 it had $19.7 million worth of errors in its financial statements, which boosted its earnings, revenue and assets.

The parent company, however, had already announced its fourth-quarter earnings when the overstatement was discovered.

The PCAOB said that Linden "helped Navistar International Corporation avoid the possibility of a revision of its reported results."

His actions included issuing an audit work paper that inaccurately characterized the reasons for the increase and successfully pushing to increase the normal threshold for determining when something is significant enough to be considered "material."

Last year, Deloitte partner Christopher Anderson was also fined $25,000 for his role in the Navistar audit.

Navistar has had numerous problems in the past with its accounting. It was forced at one time to restate earnings for several fiscal years and previously announced the Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating the matter.

To date, the SEC has not filed any charges against the company.

Navistar suffered accounting woes yet again last year, announcing in December it planned to restate its reported net income for the first nine months of its fiscal 2008.

In 2007, it was also delisted by the New York Stock Exchange for failing to comply with filing requirements. The shares were relisted in June 2008.

The PCAOB, which was created through the Sarbanes-Oxley Act following the major accounting scandals at Enron, Tyco and WorldCom, has only ever assessed three money penalties since it was formed. In addition to the two individual monetary penalties against the Deloitte partners, it also fined Deloitte & Touche $1 million in a separate, unrelated case.

-By Sarah N. Lynch, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-6634; sarah.lynch@dowjones.com