CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER
Since
When Do Nuclear Companies Get Deferred Prosecution Agreements? Since Now
20 Corporate Crime Reporter 5(1), January 20, 2006
And now nuclear corporations get deferred prosecution agreements.
For lying to the government.
About critical safety problems at a nuclear power facility.
In the deferred prosecution agreement
made public today, FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company admits that its employees,
acting on its behalf, knowingly made false representations to the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) in the course of attempting to persuade the NRC that its northern
Ohio Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station was safe to operate beyond December 31,
2001.
Prasoon Goyal, a design engineer, also entered into a deferred prosecution agreement
with the government.
Two former employees and one former contractor of the company were charged in
a five-count indictment
for allegedly preparing and providing false statements to the NRC.
David Geisen, Andrew Siemaszko, and Rodney Cook allegedly falsely represented
to the NRC that past inspections of the plant were adequate to assure safe operation
until February or March of 2002.
Under the agreement, the company will pay $28 million in penalties, restitution,
and community service projects.
In a statement
David M. Uhlmann, chief of the Justice Department’s environmental crimes
section, said that the agreement represented “a single fundamental proposition
– companies that operate nuclear power plants have a solemn obligation
to be truthful in all of their dealings with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”
“FirstEnergy violated that solemn duty at the Davis Besse plant and, in
the process, the company breached the public trust,” Uhlmann said. “Where
issues of nuclear safety are involved, there is no room for shading the truth
or hiding the facts. Nuclear power plants owe a duty of candor not only to government
officials but to the public at large.”
In the agreement, the First Energy admitted that if the company had been indicted,
federal prosecutors would have been able to prove that the company made false
statements to the NRC so that the Davis Besse plant could continue operating
until its next scheduled outage, rather than shutting down earlier for a critical
safety inspection.
Uhlmann said that the company that has entered into the deferred prosecution
agreement “is not the same company that lied and misled regulators in
2001.”
“The company, along with the NRC and the entire nuclear industry, has
done the kind of critical self-analysis that is essential to safe and effective
nuclear power,” Uhlmann said. “Based on our investigation, we have
determined that the corporate culture at the company is a very different one
today than it was four years ago, and we are confident that the misconduct of
the past will not be repeated.”
But Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) was critical of the agreement.
“I commend the work of United States Attorney Greg White, but the buck
does not stop with a couple of mid-level managers and a consultant,” Kucinich
said. “Those at the top levels of First Energy must also be held accountable.
From day one, FirstEnergy executives have been more interested in protecting
their bottom line then protecting public safety.”
“Let’s be clear – the near fatal incident at the Davis Besse
Nuclear Power Plant is not the fault of a ‘few bad apples’ but,
the failure of an entire company and those responsible for running it. These
indictments serve only to reinforce my call to revoke First Energy’s license
to run a nuclear power plant. Even with these indictments, the root problem
remains. First Energy has cultivated a culture of corner-cutting and reckless
endangerment of public safety instead of a culture of safety. No one is above
the law. I will continue to pursue this issue until all of those responsible
for this near fatal disaster are held responsible and brought to justice.”
Originally intended for juvenile delinquents, deferred prosecution agreements
are increasingly being used to shield large corporations from criminal liability.
(See “Crime Without Conviction – Report
Details Special Deals with Major Corporations,” 20 Corporate Crime
Reporter 1(1), December 28, 2005.)
For corporations, they were originally intended for corporations and large entities
like accounting firms, banks and brokerage firms – where a fraud conviction
could mean the death penalty.
But now they are being used to settle almost all forms of corporate crime cases,
from lying, to bribery, to fraud.
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