Former SC Electric & Gas executive Steve Byrne may have company.

His plea agreement on fraud charges reveals that other executives and lawyers for SCANA, the owner of SCE&G, are at risk of being charged, too.

Federal officials believe a conspiracy of executives and their lawyers hid a $9 billion nuclear failure from state officials, investors and the public for years.

An official federal document filed in US District Court in Columbia revealed:

• Byrne and unidentified “others” orchestrated a cover-up of costly errors at the nuclear construction site.

• They “deceived regulators and customers to maintain financing for the project and to financially benefit SCANA” and themselves.

• “As construction problems mounted, costs rose and schedules slipped,” Byrne and others hid the truth.

• “The conspiracy’s actions and the cover-up allowed the project to continue until the contractor [Westinghouse Electric] went bankrupt and the project was abandoned,” losing billions of dollars.

• False information Byrne and fellow conspirators gave the Public Service Commission allowed them to charge ratepayers almost $2 billion for the failing nuclear construction.

• The rate hikes “fraudulently inflated bills to customers for the stated purpose of funding the project.”

Tom Clements, director of Savannah River Site Watch, said, “We were aware from day one that SCE&G officials were misrepresenting the cost and schedule.”

“Though the charges of fraud have come too late to help customers, the next steps taken by the court must be to charge all other responsible officials and lawyers who aided and abetted criminal behavior.

“Those who abused ratepayers must be sentenced to jail time and be required to pay significant fines for their self-serving, illegal behavior,” he said.

During the PSC hearings where Byrne and others lied about the project, Clements was with the environmental group Friends of the Earth.

His group and the Sierra Club intervened numerous times to ask the PSC to close the bungled project.

Charges against Marsh, the former CEO, and Jimmy Addison, chief financial officer, are expected.

Lawyers who advised them on false testimony could also be charged.

The document doesn’t say that all top SCANA officials were in the conspiracy.

Taking part in a conspiracy to lie to regulatory officials is a felony.

Byrne, 60, a former Irmo resident, faces up to 5 years in prison, a maximum $250,000 fine and forfeiture of about $1 million, the plea agreement reads.