The former head of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio pleaded not guilty on Monday to bribery and embezzlement in the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati in a case related to two financially struggling nuclear power plants in that state, a court filing shows.
A federal grand jury on Nov. 29 indicted Sam Randazzo, 74, of Columbus on 11 counts, according to a news release issued Monday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio after the court unsealed the case. Randazzo’s plea appeared in a Monday notice of appearance.
The “indictment outlines an alleged scheme in which a public regulatory official ignored the Ohio consumers he was responsible for protecting, instead taking a bribe from an energy company seeking favors,” said FBI Cincinnati Special Agent in Charge J. William Rivers in the release from the U.S. Attorney’s office.
If convicted, Randazzo faces up to 20 years in prison.
The 20-page federal indictment in the Ohio court does not mention FirstEnergy, Akron, Ohio, by name, but the document does describe a “Company A Corp.,” based in Akron, that “until in or around February 2020…was the parent company to entities involved in nuclear energy generation and to entities appearing before PUCO.”
Company A Corp. allegedly paid $4.3 million to Randazzo for favorable actions while he was chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) from April 2019 until November 2020, when he resigned.
During that time, a FirstEnergy subsidiary that in February 2020 became the independent Energy Habor Corp. owned the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station and Perry Nuclear Power Plant.
Randazzo faces one count of conspiring to commit travel act bribery and honest services wire fraud, two counts of travel act bribery, two counts of honest services wire fraud, one count of wire fraud and five counts of making illegal monetary transactions, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Meanwhile, Vistra, Irving, Texas, plans to acquire the Davis-Besse and Perry plants from Energy Harbor in a transaction worth about $3.8 billion. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has until April 11 to review the sale, which Vistra announced in March. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in September approved transferring the plants’ operating licenses to Vistra.
