WILMINGTON (Bloomberg) — Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and other defendants agreed to pay Ohio’s state pension funds $4.5 million to settle any liability related to the fraud that destroyed Enron Corp.The funds asked a judge to dismiss their claims against the banks, which are former Enron lenders, as part of a December 15 agreement, court papers posted yesterday in federal court in Houston show.

The Ohio pension funds pursued their claims separately from a class of Enron investors who have recovered more than $7 billion in their case against former Enron banks, law firms and officers. Citigroup, the biggest US bank, and JPMorgan previously settled claims made by investors in the class action.

Enron filed the second-largest bankruptcy in US history in December 2001 after disclosing it had hidden debt in off-the- books partnerships. Enron’s stock fell from a market value high of $68 billion in August 2000 to just pennies a share by the time of its bankruptcy, which was surpassed only by WorldCom Inc.’s.

The settling banks, which also included Toronto-based Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, said in the December 15 agreement that they did not accept any wrongdoing regarding the Enron fraud and that they settled to avoid protracted litigation.

Former top executives of Enron were convicted of roles the accounting fraud that eliminated more than 5,000 jobs at Enron, once the seventh-largest US company by sales. Former chief executive officers Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay were convicted.