The action in January stemmed from a 12-day hearing last summer. In it, an administrative law judge found that the firms refused to provide workpapers and other documents connected with audit work for nine China-based companies whose securities trade in the United States.

The firms are Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Certified Public Accountants Limited, Ernst & Young Hua Ming LLP, KPMG Huazhen (Special General Partnership), and PricewaterhouseCoopers Zhong Tian CPAs Limited Company.

"This settlement recognizes the SEC's substantial recent progress in obtaining those documents from registered firms in China," Andrew Ceresney, director of the SEC's enforcement division, said in a prepared statement. The settlement also holds four of the firms accountable for previously violating U.S. rules, and makes clear that should production of documents cease, the SEC can restart the administrative proceeding."

The initial decision found that the firms willfully violated Section 106 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which requires foreign public accounting firms to provide such workpapers to the SEC upon request.

Under the settlement, the SEC can impose a variety of remedial measures if the documents it receives fail to meet certain criteria. Remedies could include an automatic six-month bar on a single firm's performance of certain audit work, commencement of a new proceeding against a firm, or the resumption of the current proceeding against all four firms. The proceeding continues against a fifth China-based accounting firm, Dahua CPA Ltd.