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Other current or former employees will also escape legal action, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Apple is one of more than 200 companies that have been investigated for irregularities over their accounting for stock options awarded to employees over the past decade or so.

One of the attorneys in the case told Reuters that the Justice Department had decided to drop its criminal inquiry.

A spokesman for Apple declined to comment.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission

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had launched an investigation for backdating options grants to Jobs, the company's co-founder and chief executive. Apple's own probe found no wrongdoing by Jobs or current management.

The SEC later cleared the company after it cooperated with the investigation, but the agency sued former Apple chief financial officer Fred Anderson and former General Counsel Nancy Heinen last year. Anderson settled wile denying any wrongdoing but Heinen's case is ongoing. She too insists she has done nothing illegal.

The SEC case relies on testimony from a lower-ranking former Apple lawyer, Wendy Howell, who testified she was asked by Heinen to falsify minutes of meetings of Apple's board of directors that never took place.

A lawyer for Heinen could not be reached to comment.

Apple and Jobs still have to deal with three civil cases brought by disgruntled shareholders.