‘Key Westinghouse witness’ in SC nuclear scandal told lies to help SCANA fool public
A former Westinghouse executive who oversaw construction on SCANA’s doomed $10 billion nuclear project in Fairfield County admitted lying about the project in an effort to fool people into thinking the doomed project would be a success, a federal prosecutor said Thursday in federal court.
The former Westinghouse official, Carl Churchman, 70, was in court in Columbia before U.S. District Judge Mary Lewis to plead guilty to one count of lying to FBI agent Aaron Hawkins.
Churchman, who now lives in Utah, was the third person so far to plead guilty in an ongoing four-year FBI investigation of criminal acts connected to the 2017 failure of SCANA’s effort to build two nuclear plants at the V.C. Summer facility in Fairfield County, about 25 miles northwest of Columbia.
It was the biggest business failure in S.C. history and threw more than 4,000 people out of work. At first, the July 2017 failure of the nuclear project was attributed to cost overruns and mismanagement, but the FBI investigation has established that top SCANA officials engaged in a criminal conspiracy to hide the looming business failure from the public, regulars and investors who owned SCANA stock.
“There is more to come (in the investigation), and Mr. Churchman is a key witness for us,” assistant U.S. Attorney Winston Holliday told Judge Lewis, indicating that more people would face criminal charges.
In 2020 and this year, two former top SCANA executives — Stephen Byrne and Kevin Marsh — pleaded guilty to criminal fraud charges related to their knowing about costly delays to the project, delays they unlawfully kept secret for years from regulators and shareholders. Sentences in those cases are pending.
A plea agreement signed by Churchman with the government commits him to providing information to law enforcement in the ongoing investigation and says the government will move for him to get a lessor sentence if his help is substantial. He faces five years in prison for lying to FBI agent Hawkins.
Acting U.S. Attorney for South Carolina Rhett DeHart declined after court to say how many more people might be arrested but made it clear there would be others.
“This (Churchman’s) guilty plea shows that the investigation into the V.C. Summer nuclear debacle did not end with the former SCANA executives,” DeHart said in a press release. “We are committed to seeing this case through and holding all individual and corporate wrongdoers accountable.”
In court statements to the judge, Holliday gave new details Thursday about SCANA’s, and now Westinghouse’s, coverup of how bad conditions were at the nuclear construction site.
As project manager, Churchman was aware that Westinghouse executives in early 2017 were making false statements in meetings to top SCANA officials about how construction was going at the nuclear site, Holliday said.
The progress of SCANA, a publicly-traded company whose stock was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, on the nuclear project was being closely watched by investors and regulators. If SCANA finished both nuclear reactors by Dec. 31, 2020, it would qualify for $1.4 billion in tax credits, Holliday said.
In early 2017, although Churchman knew the project would not make those dates, he was involved in reporting optimistic and false completion dates to SCANA, Holliday said.
On July 31, 2017, SCANA and its junior partner in the nuclear venture, Santee Cooper, announced they were abandoning the project.
The announcement stunned South Carolina’s business and political world. The Legislature had given SCANA permission to add special charges on to ratepayers electric bills to pay for the ongoing billions in construction at the nuclear site.
At the hearing’s end, Judge Lewis asked Churchman if he was guilty.
“Yes, your honor,” Churchman said.
A sentencing date will be set at some undetermined future time.
Besides Holliday, other federal prosecutors on the case are Jim May, Brook Andrews, Emily Limehouse, and Jason Peavy along with John O’Halloran, a lawyer with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Churchman was represented by Lauren Williams of Charleston.
