Nate Monroe: Prosecutors plan to call FPL exec in key JEA hearing
Federal prosecutors plan to call a Florida Power & Light vice president as a witness in an upcoming hearing in the fraud case against former JEA CEO Aaron Zahn and CFO Ryan Wannemacher, according to a list prosecutors filed in court Friday.
FPL's parent company, NextEra, submitted an $11 billion bid to acquire JEA during a tumultuous and ultimately unsuccessful 2019 campaign to privatize the city-owned electric, water and sewer utility, over which FPL — one of the largest electric companies in the United States — loomed large. Since then, the company has been dragged back into headlines over its effort to purchase JEA: during the bidding process, a consulting firm working for FPL had also deployed more secretive tactics to pave the way for the company's bid, which included putting together an idea to offer a member of the Jacksonville City Council a six-figure job with a sham nonprofit and surveilling a journalist.
And when a grand jury indicted Zahn and Wannemacher last year on conspiracy and wire fraud charges, prosecutors included a brief but notable episode: days before Zahn revealed his plans to put JEA up for sale, he met with the CEO of an unnamed potential buyer in West Palm Beach and disclosed his plans to privatize the agency; the unnamed company was not accused of any wrongdoing.
FPL, which is headquartered in West Palm Beach, has never definitively said it was the company referenced in the indictment, though its former CEO, Eric Silagy, said in an interview last year it likely was. "I mean, I would think that would be us. Right?" Silagy said at the time. "But it could be others as well."
Prosecutors indicated they plan to call Pam Rauch, FPL's vice president of external affairs and economic development, who was part of a team the company had put together to work on its JEA bid.
The upcoming hearing, set to begin May 15, is intended to force federal prosecutors to demonstrate the evidence they marshaled to indict Zahn and Wannemacher is not tied directly or indirectly to sworn statements the two men provided to city attorneys in 2019 about their involvement in the JEA privatization controversy — statements for which they received Garrity protection, meaning their contents can't be used to incriminate them.
The West Palm Beach meeting with the unnamed buyer was not an episode either man disclosed had taken place during their protected interviews with city attorneys, so it's possible Rauch's inclusion on the list is an instance in which prosecutors plan to highlight that their investigation was not guided by those sworn statements.
Zahn and Wannemacher are accused of being the architects of an opaque, get-rich-quick bonus plan that could have paid out millions if they had successfully sold JEA to a private firm, the campaign Zahn was leading in 2019 that imploded amid controversy. During the fallout, Zahn and Wannemacher sat for sworn interviews with city attorneys as they investigated whether the JEA board had cause to fire Zahn.
The government also listed several members of the Jacksonville City Council Auditor's Office, several former JEA board members, current and former JEA employees, former city general counsel Jason Gabriel, and two City Council members, Ron Salem and Rory Diamond, as potential witnesses they plan to call during the court proceeding, called a Kastigar hearing.
If the judge finds that prosecutors relied on the defendants' protected statements in forming their criminal case, he could take a number of steps, including removing the prosecution team from the case or throwing out the indictments all together.
Salem and Diamond held a public meeting in December 2019 during which they pressed Zahn, Wannemacher and other JEA officials to provide them details on who had come up with the bonus plan and why it had been pursued in the first place. Wannemacher's defense attorneys are arguing that his statements to the council members that day should also be considered protected — that is, that prosecutors should be barred from using those statements against Wannemacher in court — even though he was not put under oath or subpoenaed to attend the council hearing.
The witness and exhibits list prosecutors submitted Friday indicate the Kastigar hearing will last for several days.
And significant portions of the hearing are set to be closed to the media and public, despite objections from several Jacksonville media organizations, including The Florida Times-Union. The magistrate judge who will preside over the Kastigar hearing ruled against the media companies earlier this week, finding there was "good cause" to prevent public access to limit the publicity of Zahn and Wannemacher's protected statements.
The Times-Union plans to appeal that order to U.S. District Judge Brian Davis, who is overseeing the case.
Nate Monroe is a metro columnist whose work regularly appears every Thursday and Sunday. Follow him on Twitter @NateMonroeTU.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Nate Monroe: Prosecutors plan to call FPL exec in key JEA hearing
