WASHINGTON, Nov 18 (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday said it assessed $3.9 billion in fines related to enforcement actions in fiscal 2021, down from a record $4.7 billion in 2020, even as standalone actions increased. The top U.S. markets regulator said it assessed $1.4 billion in penalties and another $2.4 billion in ill-gotten funds disgorged through 697 actions. That compared with $1 billion in penalties and $3.6 billion in disgorgement across 715 cases in 2020. Standalone enforcement actions increased to 434 from 405 previously, but remained below the prior five-year average, the annual report said. In fiscal 2020, a handful of sizeable cases drove the bulk of the agency"s collections. The SEC brought a series of first-of-their kind actions, including the first case against a decentralized finance (DeFi) firm, fraud charges against an alternative data provider and securities law violations on the "dark web," according to the report. The year"s actions included a large resolution with Goldman Sachs (GS.N), in which the company agreed to pay about $1 billion to settle SEC charges related to the 1MDB scandal, an accounting controls case against General Electric Co (GE.N) and charges against Kraft Heinz (KHC.O) and two former executives related to a years-long expense management scheme. The SEC also brought a rare litigated case against AT&T Inc (T.N) and three executives for allegedly disclosing material nonpublic information to research analysts. The SEC said it doled out a record $564 million to 108 whistleblowers in fiscal 2021. Reporting by Chris Prentice in Washington Editing by David Gregorio and Matthew Lewis Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.