Yost seeks to add more defendants to suit

CLEVELAND >> Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost on Thursday asked a judge in Columbus to add two former FirstEnergy Corp. executives and the former chair of the Ohio utilities commission as defendants in a state racketeering lawsuit for their alleged roles in helping win passage of a tainted energy bill in 2019.

Former CEO Chuck Jones and former Senior Vice President Michael Dowling were fired by FirstEnergy in October for violating company policies and its code of conduct.

Sam Randazzo, former chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, resigned in November after FBI agents searched his Columbus townhome and FirstEnergy revealed in securities documents that top executives had paid him $4.3 million for his future help at the commission.

The three men are accused in the lawsuit of conspiring to win a $1 billion legislative bailout of two nuclear power plants — operated by a wholly owned FirstEnergy subsidiary at the time. They also are accused of working together to include in the bill an annual revenue guarantee for the company potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The amended lawsuit asks for Randazzo to forfeit the $4.3 million and repay the salary he collected as utilities commission chair from April 2019 through November 2020.

The Attorney General’s Office in a filing said the three men were added to the complaint because of new public information, including FirstEnergy’s admission of wrongdoing last month in a deferred prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors.

The admission, called a statement of facts, “details the direct relationship and coordination” between the three men and former Ohio House speaker Larry Householder to help FirstEnergy, according to Yost and his attorneys.

“This is the justice system working, holding bad actors accountable,” Yost said in a statement Thursday. “To restore public trust, everyone involved in this sordid matter needs to pay a price. The goal is to leave no doubt — among politicians, the powerful and the rich — that engaging in public corruption will ruin you.”