Former Westinghouse executive gets home detention in SCANA nuclear scandal

A federal judge gave six months’ home detention on Tuesday to a top Westinghouse construction official at the V.C. Summer nuclear site for lying to an FBI agent during the federal investigation into why the defunct energy giant SCANA failed to build two nuclear reactors despite spending billions of dollars.

Carl Churchman, 72, and his lawyer, Lauren Williams of Charleston, refused to say after they left the Columbia federal courthouse where Churchman will serve his home detention.

But federal officials at the hearing said later they believed he lives in Arizona. Churchman must wear a geo-location monitoring device, pay a $5,000 fine and serve a year on probation that overlaps with his six-month home detention.

Williams told Judge Mary Geiger Lewis that Churchman has agreed to be a prosecution witness in any future cases and already has a job offer from Type One Energy, which bills itself as a clean energy company.

Churchman was not one of the “big wigs” who were implicated in the scandal, Williams said. “He was the guy with the hard hat working 4,000 hours a year,” she said.

During the 20-minute hearing, Churchman apologized to the the judge, federal agents, the community “and my family.”

In handing down the sentence, Lewis said in her 11 years on the bench she had never seen so many letters from supporters praising a defendant’s good character.

But, Lewis said, “It’s important the government be able to get to the truth” in investigations...”when people interfere with that ability, that is a big problem.”

Although Churchman could have gotten a maximum of five years in prison for lying to an FBI agent, assistant U.S. Attorney Winston Holliday agreed with the lenient sentence, saying several factors contributed to it.

For one, Holiday said, after Churchman was caught lying, he immediately confessed. “I don’t know if I have ever seen a more apologetic, remorseful individual.” Churchman then became an excellent source for the government in its investigation, Holliday said. “He told us all kinds of things that we needed to know.”

Also, Holiday said, Churchman has decades of knowledge about the nuclear industry and is “a very esteemed individual” in that field who is sought after by companies. And the nuclear industry is “a vital industry for our country,” Holliday said.

But Holliday stressed that lying to government agents is a serious offense. “The government needs true facts to proceed in all the investigations it undertakes.”

Tom Clements, a longtime environment activist, said after the hearing he was disappointed in the sentence and that a years-long investigation by the FBI has only resulted in convictions of two other people, both former top executives at SCANA.

“I don’t think this is justice for the people of South Carolina,” he said.

Churchman is the third person to be sentenced — after the two top executives from SCANA — for a years-long illegal cover-up of the project’s troubles.

The cover-up was designed to keep the public, regulators and investors from finding out how badly things were going at the nuclear plant construction site, according to prosecutors.

It is a crime for public companies such as the now-defunct SCANA, whose shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange, to conceal troubling news that might affect the stock price. At its height, SCANA was a Fortune 500 company with 700,000 electric customers and 350,000 natural gas customers in South Carolina.

Construction on the plant began in March 2013. From the beginning, it was plagued by schedule delays, missed deadlines and cost increases, according to evidence in the case.

In 2015, Westinghouse hired Churchman to be the onsite nuclear project manager.

At that time, “the project was long behind schedule and ... was already sliding into failure. Despite the absolute mess he walked into, Mr. Churchman put the full force of his knowledge and work ethic towards trying to right the ship, impressing both his Westinghouse colleagues and the contractors on the project,” Churchman’s lawyer Williams wrote to Judge Lewis in a motion seeking a non-prison sentence.

When SCANA aborted the project in July 2017 due to mismanagement and overspending, the sudden closing threw more than 4,000 construction workers out of work.

Others hurt by the project’s sudden abandonment included the more than 1 million SCANA customers, whose monthly bills had been jacked up for years to pay for ongoing construction costs. Although utilities typically issue bonds to finance major construction costs, the S.C. General Assembly had passed a law that allowed SCANA to tack a surcharge onto customers’ monthly bills to pay for construction costs.

As a result of the project’s shutdown, the stock prices of the once-proud SCANA — it had been South Carolina’s only Fortune 500 company — plummeted. The utility was ultimately absorbed by energy giant Dominion, based in Virginia.

Two top former SCANA executives have been sentenced to prison.

Kevin Marsh, former SCANA CEO, was sentenced to two years in prison in October 2021 for his role in the cover-up. He also forfeited $5 million to the government. He has been released.

Stephen Byrne, former SCANA chief operating officer, in March was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison, hit with a $200,000 fine and ordered to pay $1 million in restitution.

Former Westinghouse Senior Vice President Jeffrey Benjamin was originally indicted on mail fraud charges in August 2021 by a federal grand jury in Columbia. He was accused of helping former SCANA officials hide major workplace problems from 2015 to 2017 at the V.C. Summer site. In his job, Benjamin oversaw new plants and major projects.

His indictment was dismissed in August by Judge Lewis, who said the grand jury that indicted Benjamin was potentially biased against him because it included former SCANA ratepayers who were victims in the government’s case against Benjamin.

It is not known if the government will try to re-indict Benjamin, whose lawyer, William Sullivan of Washington D.C. was in the courtroom Tuesday. Sullivan had no comment.

Prosecutors in the government’s case against SCANA included Holliday, Brook Andrews and Emily Limehouse.