By Jerry Bellune
JerryBellune@yahoo.com
Former SC Electric & Gas executive Steve Byrne is due in court next week.
He faces a 10 am plea hearing Tuesday, July 14, at the Matthew Perry Court House in Columbia before Judge Mary Geiger Lewis.
An hour later he faces a bond hearing at the same court house before Judge Paige Gossett.
Byrne, 60, a former Irmo resident, faces up to 5 years in prison, a maximum $250,000 fine and forfeiture of about $1 million, the plea agreement reads.
Bryne’s plea agreement on fraud charges reveals that other executives and lawyers for SCANA, the owner of SCE&G, are at risk of being charged, too.
Federal officials believe a conspiracy of SCANA executives and their lawyers hid a $9 billion SCE&G nuclear failure from state officials, investors and the public.
An official federal document filed in US District Court in Columbia revealed:
• Byrne and unidentified “others” orchestrated a cover-up of costly errors at the nuclear construction site.
• They “deceived regulators and customers to maintain financing for the project and to financially benefit SCANA” and themselves.
• “As construction problems mounted, costs rose and schedules slipped,” Byrne and others hid the truth.
• “The conspiracy’s actions and the cover-up allowed the project to continue until the contractor [Westinghouse Electric]went bankrupt and the project was abandoned,” losing billions of dollars. 
• False information Byrne and fellow conspirators gave the Public Service Commission allowed them to charge ratepayers almost $2 billion for the failing nuclear construction.

For the rest of the story, see Thursday's Lexingtobn County Chronicle.