An ex-SCANA boss invoked his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination in a civil lawsuit.

In a federal court filing, Kevin Marsh’s attorneys said the former chairman and CEO of the Lexington County-based utility had a Constitutional right not to incriminate himself in a class action lawsuit over a failed $9 billion nuclear project.

Over 9 years, Marsh and fellow executives convinced state regulators to allow them to raise millions of dollars in electric rates.

That cost their ratepayers more than $2 billion for a project that will likely never deliver a kilowatt of electricity or the lower rates they promised state lawmakers.

Marsh pleaded the 5th Nov. 21 while being deposed in the federal civil lawsuit.

Attorneys for Jessica S. Cook and a class of plaintiffs filed suit against Santee Cooper, the taxpayer-owned utility that was SCANA’s 45% partner in the 2 failed nuclear reactors.

SCANA’s new owner, Dominion Energy, plans to charge ratepayers for its debt from the project.

The project left SCANA saddled with $5 billion in debt and Santee Cooper with a $4 billion debt.

The discovery that both utilities’ top brass knew for more than a year that the twin nuclear reactor project was doomed cost Marsh his job and a multi-million dollar retirement package.

Marsh and his executive team hid warnings of expert nuclear engineers in the long-secret Bechtel report and lied to the Public Service Commission to be able to keep charging 725,000 ratepayers excessive rates.

The discovery resulted in a flood of lawsuits and US Attorney Sherri Lydon’s federal criminal investigation.

That investigation is mentioned in Marsh’s reasons to invoke the 5th Amendment.

“Mr. Marsh invoked his constitutional rights in response to questions that … went to issues that are the subject of the US Department of Justice’s ongoing criminal investigation into the construction and abandonment of the nuclear reactors at VC Summer,” his attorneys said.

In the deposition, Marsh was asked questions that could have “elicited testimony providing a link in the chain of inculpatory evidence,” his lawyers said.

That could “be a link in the government’s theory of criminal liability.”