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Former PUCO Chairman, Former FirstEnergy Executives Indicted On Public Corruption Charges
Excerpts from Ohio Attorney General’s Press Release:
{***} A former chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, two former FirstEnergy Corp. executives and two entities have been indicted by a Summit County grand jury as a corrupt enterprise for their alleged role in the House Bill 6 scandal, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, Summit County Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh and Summit County Sheriff Kandy Fatheree announced this morning.
Charged with a combined 27 felony counts are Samuel “Sam” Randazzo, former PUCO chairman; Charles “Chuck” Jones, former CEO of First Energy; Michael Dowling, former First Energy senior vice president of external affairs.
A copy of the indictment is available on the attorney general’s website.
The state charges stem from an investigation conducted by a task force organized under the Ohio Organized Crime Investigations Commission, within the Attorney General’s Office. The task force was created at the request of the prosecutor of Summit County, where FirstEnergy is headquartered. By Ohio law, the attorney general’s OCIC task force cannot initiate an investigation without a request from a prosecutor.
Randazzo and others have been indicted and prosecuted in federal court for their role in the House Bill 6 scandal. These state charges mark the first criminal charges against Jones and Dowling.
