SCANA CEO Kevin Marsh was under “enormous pressure” to keep fooling regulators all was well.

Sources who knew Marsh believe he was pressed to paint a rosy picture while a $10 billion nuclear project fell years behind schedule and its costs skyrocketed.

“As an accountant,” one said, “he lacked experience running anything that size.”

Criminal charges against Marsh are the result of a 3-year law enforcement investigation led by the FBI and months of behind-thescenes negotiations between prosecutors and Marsh’s criminal defense attorneys.

Marsh has agreed to cooperate with law enforcement to bring criminal charges against unnamed others.

Marsh is the 2nd top executive to be charged with criminal conspiracy fraud.

In June, Stephen Byrne, 60, a former SCANA COO, pleaded guilty to helping others carry out the conspiracy to hide the true extent of the nuclear problems.

Marsh’s plea agreement is added evidence that the nuclear plant downfall was not due to incompetence alone but to criminal conduct by the company’s top leaders.

Their other victims were:

• Hundreds of nuclear construction workers who lost their jobs when SCANA abandoned the project.

• Thousands of SCANA’s utility customers who for years had extra fees tacked onto their monthly bills.

• Thousands of SCANA investors – many of them SCANA employees who invested their retirement savings in stock which plunged in value from more than $70 a share to about $40 a share.

Ratepayers paid $2.2 billion more in monthly bills for more than 5 years.

SCANA used $500 million of that $2.2 billion to pay its shareholders. On Wall Street, the company became known for a reliable stream of increasing dividends and a rising stock price.

In 2017, after disclosure of the nuclear project’s shaky status, the troubled company was acquired by out-of-state energy giant Dominion Energy. SCANA’s downfall was perhaps the most costly business failure in South Carolina history.

According to federal documents, the conspirators:

• Lied to state lawmakers, regulators, the news media, investors and ratepayers that the 2 nuclear reactors would be working by 2020.

• Won rate hikes based on false and misleading statements that “fraudulently inflated bills to customers for the stated purpose of financing the project.”

• Applied for more rate increases based on their lies the project was going well.