Beleaguered CMS Energy said Monday it will not be able to certify the truthfulness of its 2000, 2001 and its semi-annual 2002 financial statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this week, as many publicly held companies will be doing, until it completes its internal investigation into bogus round-trip trading activity. The company had already informed the SEC it was conducting the investigation.

While several energy companies — such as Williams, Duke Energy and El Paso — said they plan to verify the truthfulness of their financial statements this week, CMS Energy told the SEC it needs to delay certifying its financial statements until it can restate its results for both 2000 and 2001. The Dearborn, MI-based company said the restatements can’t be done until after the Special Investigative Committee of its board of directors completes a probe of the company’s participation in bogus trading activity.

In addition, CMS Energy’s outside accountants, Ernst & Young LP, will have to conduct a re-audit of the company’s 2000 and 2001 financial statements and review quarterly and semi-annual statements for those years before results can be certified, it said in an 8-K filing submitted last week.

For the same reasons, CMS Energy said its chief executive office and chief financial officer could not certify the financial results for the first two quarters of 2002 as required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, a major corporate accountability bill approved by Congress in July. The new law extends the SEC certification requirement to cover about 14,000 companies in the United States.

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