COLUMBIA, S.C. — An agreement has been reached between the US Attorney's Office in South Carolina and Westinghouse Electric Company in the ongoing investigation of criminal misconduct at the VC Summer Nuclear Plant in Jenkinsville, SC.
Federal charges are still pending against former Westinghouse manager Carl Churchman and former Westinghouse senior vice president for new plants and major projects Jeffrey Benjamin. Westinghouse agrees to completely cooperate with the federal investigation until the conclusion of these criminal prosecutions and to contribute $21.25 million to South Carolina's Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program.
The first payment of $5 million must be made by Westinghouse within 30 days to the program -- created to help ratepayers affected by the failure of the construction of two nuclear units at the Jenkinsville site. The balance of $16.25 million would be paid by Westinghouse on or before July 1, 2022.
These payments are the latest to be made by Westinghouse.
Through its former parent company -- Toshiba -- Westinghouse has made settlements payments of $1.032 billion to SCANA, $976 million to Santee Cooper, and $160 million to various contractor liens -- for a total of $2,168 billion.
After the company abandoned construction of the new units at VC Summer, Westinghouse was acquired Brookfield Business Partners who overhauled Westinghouse leadership. Brookfield removed, retrained or re-assigned Westinghouse senior management, elected new members to the Board of Directors, restructured and retrained the finance organization and implemented new controls over financial reporting, established a corporate controller position and implemented a new whistleblower program where employees could report or raise concerns without fear of retaliation.
Acting United States Attorney M. Rhett DeHart said, “Our office continues to seek justice for the victims of the V.C. Summer Project failure. Westinghouse’s cooperation is vital to our ongoing efforts to hold accountable the individuals most responsible for this debacle. More than $21 million in new low-income ratepayer relief is a strong sign of our commitment to assist those most affected.”
