The U.S. Justice Department did not plan to seek criminal charges against Fannie Mae, an important step for the mortgage funding giant as it tried to move beyond a multibillion-dollar accounting scandal, The Washington Post reported on Friday.

A Justice Department spokesman confirmed that the nearly two-year-long criminal investigation of the company had ended, said the report.

Coupled with settlements reached earlier this year with two regulatory agencies, the decision clears Fannie Mae of being prosecuted for years of accounting mistakes that are costing hundreds of millions of dollars to correct.

But the company still faced shareholder litigation over the value lost when the accounting problems were revealed and the stock price plunged, according to the report.

In addition, former Fannie Mae executives remain under scrutiny.

The Justice Department is still investigating whether former Fannie Mae chairman and chief executive Franklin D. Raines and former chief financial officer J. Timothy Howard committed perjury when they testified about the company's accounting practices before a House of Representatives panel in 2004.

The Securities and Exchange Commission had not ruled out civil charges against individuals over the accounting matter, the report said.

Fannie Mae, which was chartered by the government to provide a steady flow of funds for home mortgages, has acknowledged overstating past profits by billions of dollars. Regulators have accused it of manipulating earnings from 1998 through 2004 to maximize executive bonuses and to deliver the smooth earnings growth that Wall Street favors.

Source: Xinhua