DALLAS, Texas - Spencer Barasch, once a high-ranking official in the Securities and Exchange Commission's Fort Worth, Texas, office, was barred from representing clients before the SEC for a year for violating federal conflict-of-interest rules by working for a company linked to disgraced financier R. Allen Stanford, the agency said Thursday.

Reported by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Barasch now heads the securities enforcement team at the Dallas law firm Andrews Kurth.

Earlier, he agreed to pay a $50,000 fine without admitting or denying that he "personally and substantially" handled matters involving a Stanford business, the SEC said in a news release from Washington.

Barasch was associate district director for the SEC Division of Enforcement's Fort Worth office from June 1998 to April 2005. After joining a private law firm later in 2005, Barasch asked whether he could do legal work for Stanford but was told that he was "permanently barred" from representing Stanford or any of his companies.

While Barasch declined to represent Stanford then, the SEC said, he accepted work for a Stanford business in fall 2006 - billing 12 hours of "legal work related to Stanford matters Barasch had participated in while at the commission."

Stanford, found guilty in March of running a $7 billion Ponzi scheme, is scheduled to be sentenced June 14.