S.C. Electric & Gas ratepayers aren’t the only ones being taken for a ride.

Customers who bought electricity from Santee Cooper did not know it but they helped pay $8.9 million to SCE&G executives after they abandoned a $9 billion nuclear power plant.

Gov. Henry McMaster revealed these long-hidden payments, the Charleston Post and Courier reported.

SCE&G’s owners, Lexington County-based SCANA, continued to request bonus money even after construction was called off last July.

SCANA sent Santee Cooper an invoice last August for $3.3 million in bonuses.

Santee Cooper refused the final bill after vice president of nuclear energy Michael Crosby raised alarm. But Santee Cooper’s former chief executive Lonnie Carter over-ruled him, Crosby said.

“I ultimately got reamed,” Crosby said.

Federal investigators and a federal grand jury have the incriminating Santee Cooper bonus documents.

Emails obtained by the Post and Courier show San-tee Cooper’s nuclear team repeatedly asked SCANA about proper management of the $9 billion nuclear project as far back as 2013.

They asked if SCANA employees were simply “too nice” to stand up to the project’s struggling contractor, Westinghouse Electric, or too “naive” to push back.

They wrote that SCANA had “consistently demonstrated ineptitude” in its project management.

The documents raise questions as to why Santee Cooper continued to pay performance bonuses for SCANA’s directors while openly criticizing their inability to control the $9 billion project.

Gov. McMaster’s office released the documents because Santee Cooper’s more than 175,000 direct customers and more than 772,000 customers with the state’s electric cooperative have a right to know what they paid for, his spokesman Brian Symmes said.

Santee Cooper spokeswoman Mollie Gore said its contract with SCANA required them to share expenses including bonuses.

She said Carter, who retired as CEO with $800,000 a year, made the decision without board approval.