Former executive director of the South Carolina energy utility SCANA agreed to plead guilty this week to a federal conspiracy charge in connection with NukeGate – the failed construction of a pair of abandoned nuclear reactors that attracted more contributors and contributors from the State of Palmetto $ 10 billion.
And telling …
Kevin Marsh – who was once South Carolina’s most powerful business executive – also agreed to plead guilty to a state charge of obtaining property through false pretenses “with the intention of deceiving and defrauding a person of that property,” according to documents filed in federal court on Tuesday.
He will spend at least a year and a half behind bars in connection with his federal guilty plea, sources familiar with the case told us.
Oh, and that assumes your cooperation helps prosecutors as they seek to advance what is clearly an ongoing investigation …
According to court documents obtained through this media, Marsh agreed “to be completely honest and frank with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, providing complete, complete and truthful information about all criminal activities about which he has knowledge”.
If Marsh’s assistance doesn’t help prosecutors move their case forward, he could go to prison for up to a decade.
Marsh, 65, also agreed to “pay a refund for the proceeds of his criminal conduct” in the amount of $ 5 million – of which he must pay at least $ 3 million before his sentence in federal court on a date yet to be determined.
Marsh is the second ex-SCANA employee to plead guilty in connection with this investigation. The company’s former vice president Stephen A. Byrne pleaded guilty to telegraphing fraud in July in connection with this investigation – which began in 2017 after the shocking implosion of the nuclear reactor project.
SCANA (which has already been sold to Virginia Dominion Energy) and government administered public service Santee Cooper were partners in the NukeGate project, a definite economic failure that left taxpayers and taxpayers in the state of Palmetto facing a mountain of debt.
Encouraged by the SC General Assembly, these two concessionaires spent or borrowed more than $ 10 billion in the construction of a pair of next generation nuclear reactors in Jenkinsville, SC, which should be operational in 2016 and 2017, respectively.
Despite the huge disbursement of money, the project was never completed – and the two concessionaires could not pay the estimated amount $ 10-16 billion price tag needed to complete it.
On July 31, 2017, Santee Cooper shut down the reactors. Shortly after, it was revealed that executives from both dealerships knew that the project had been doomed for years and did not warn the public.
Instead, they allegedly hid that critical information from regulators while continuing to raise rates and accumulate additional debt. Santee Cooper, for example, lied openly about bail documents … and tried to raise his clients’ fees just a week before shutting down the project.
Customers recovered only a few cents on several high-profile deals.
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RELATED | Update to the Santee Cooper Agreement
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To date, no Santee Cooper executive has entered into guilty plea agreements or been criminally charged in connection with NukeGate … and as was the case after Byrne’s appeal earlier this year, the documents submitted in connection with the appeal of Marsh seemed to focus exclusively on SCANA executives.
Like Marsh, Byrne also agreed to help prosecutors in their deep and continuous plunge into this great economic disaster – which could soon focus its attention on Westinghouse, the contractor in the construction of the damaged reactors.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Marsh has worked at SCANA for 33 years. He became vice president and chief financial officer of the company in 1996 and senior vice president two years later. A sycophantic profile of Marsh from the May 2013 edition of Columbia Metropolitan the magazine praised him as a “leader (SCANA) and South Carolina in a nuclear energy revival that will see the state’s first new nuclear plants built in more than 25 years”.
Obviously, This did not happened …
“Through intentional and material misrepresentations and omissions, Marsh deceived regulators and customers in order to maintain project funding and benefit SCANA financially,” documents filed with Marsh’s plea of guilt declare. “The members of the conspiracy’s actions and the associated cover-up resulted in billions of dollars of loss.”
“In these challenging times, no one should be able to use a position of trust, power and influence to take the working people out of South Carolina,” US prosecutor Peter M. McCoy, Jr. said when announcing the appeal. “Although the archived documents speak for themselves, this office will continue to work with our federal and state partners to stand firm against those who intend to defraud South Carolina taxpayers.”
“It’s important that people at the top are held accountable when they don’t follow the law,” South Carolina’s attorney general Alan Wilson said in a corresponding statement. “The attorney general’s office is pleased to work with our federal and state prosecutors and law enforcement partners to seek justice against those who defraud southern Carolinians.”
The Byrne and Marsh indictment is being handled by McCoy’s office under the direction of the US assistant attorney Jim May – with the support of US assistant lawyers Brook Andrews, Emily Limehouse, Winston Holliday and special assistant to the prosecutor John O’Halloran.
Leading the charge in the attorney general’s office are Donald Zelenka, Creighton Waters and David Fernandez.
-FITSNews
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