Ex-utility exec pleads guilty to $1B fraud in South Carolina

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Nearly three years after leading a failed project to build two nuclear reactors in South Carolina, an executive in charge of the construction pleaded guilty Thursday to taking more than $1 billion from the pockets of ratepayers and investors.

Former SCANA Corp. Executive Vice President Stephen Byrne said little beyond answering the judge's yes or no questions as he pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.

Byrne agreed to tell investigators everything he knows about the lies and deception SCANA and its subsidiary South Carolina Electric & Gas used to keep regulators approving rate increases and investors to keep supporting the reactors.

The lies were told to regulators, investors on earnings calls and in press releases and presentations numerous times, authorities said.

The executives didn't want anyone outside the company to discover the reactors at the V.C. Summer Plant north of Columbia would not be finished by the end of 2020, missing a deadline for $1.4 billion in federal tax credits needed to keep the $10 billion project from swamping the utility, according to a 87-page fraud complaint filed in February by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Former SCANA CEO Kevin Marsh was also named in those court papers. No one else has been charged. Prosecutors have refused to say if they are going after anyone else, but Byrne's indictment mentions two other executives without naming them.

The utility and its minority partner, state-owned Santee Cooper, spent more than $9 billion on the reactors, which never generated a watt of power before being abandoned at the end of July 2017.

The maximum penalties are five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, but prosecutors promised to ask a judge for a...