It’s, federal prosecutors say, maybe the most important public corruption scandal in Ohio’s historical past, a three-year conspiracy by which one in all Ohio’s largest firms funneled some $60 million to one of many state’s strongest politicians in alternate for a $1.3 billion bailout.
And people investigators say they’re solely coming to the tip of Act I.
On Thursday, the previous Republican speaker of the Ohio Home of Representatives, Larry L. Householder, can be sentenced in federal court docket in Cincinnati for violating racketeering and bribery legal guidelines.
The outlines of the fees have been recognized since his arrest, with 4 different males, three years in the past: FirstEnergy Company, a Fortune 500 electrical utility based mostly in Akron, funneled the $60 million although numerous nonprofit entities. In return, Mr. Householder rammed a legislation by way of the state legislature that gave the corporate the bailout for 2 troubled nuclear energy vegetation. Prosecutors have really helpful a sentence of as much as 20 years.
However, as described early this 12 months in a 26-day trial, the alliance between the utility and Mr. Householder, 64, was way over a bribery scandal. Amongst different issues, prosecutors and specialists say, it was an nearly cinematic instance of how the darkish cash that pervades each state and federal politics slithers unseen from donor to beneficiary.