Brazilian state-owned Petrobras was yesterday charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for misleading US investors. SEC alleged that Petrobras falsely showed payments made by US investors as expenditures to "acquire and improve assets". This inflated the actual value of the Petrobras’ assets by an approximately $2.5 billion. Petrobras will pay $853 million penalty, as well as $933 million in disgorgement and prejudgment interest to settle all the charges.