NEW YORK (AP) ? The former chief financial officer of Refco Inc. was accused in an indictment yesterday of participating in a scheme to defraud investors that resulted in losses of more than $1 billion (euro800 million).

In an indictment returned in US District Court in Manhattan, Robert C. Trosten was charged with defrauding investors and assisting Phillip R. Bennett, formerly Refco's chief executive officer, in hiding hundreds of millions of dollars of debt owed to Refco by a company controlled by Bennett.

The superceding indictment also added new charges against Bennett concerning fraud against holders of Refco's bonds.

Bennett and others were already charged with conspiring to commit securities fraud for hiding from auditors and investors losses that Refco and its customers had incurred in the financial markets.

The indictment charged Trosten and Bennett with conspiring to defraud Refco's auditors and investors from the mid-1990s and October, 2005.

The indictment said they also tried to hide the large debts owed to Refco as a result of a scheme in which Bennett from 1999 through 2005 made the debt owed to Refco seem on the company's financial books to be a debt owed by a Refco customer.

The indictment charged Trosten with assisting Bennett in carrying out the year-end transactions, including defrauding the purchasers of $600 million (euro478 million) in notes issued by Refco in 2004 by hiding the existence and size of the debt owed to Refco from them.

The indictment also charges Bennett with defrauding the purchasers of $583 million (euro465 million) of Refco's common stock when the company went public in August 2005.

The indictment alleged that Bennett caused Trosten to receive a payment of about $48 million (euro38 million) in August 2004 when the leveraged buyout transaction was being handled.

Refco filed for bankruptcy last year on October 17, a week after it announced that a $430 million (euro343 million) debt to the company owed by a firm controlled by the ousted chairman and CEO had been concealed.