New Jersey Monitor, an independent news organization is reporting that Holtec, the company that made the nuclear waste storage canisters for the failed San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) has admitted that its employees embezzled money and duped its CEO into a $70 million loss from questionable investments in the cannabis industry.
Holtec’s spokesperson, Patrick O’Brien, has stated that no public money from nuclear power decommissioning trust funds was invested in marijuana.
But Nina Babiarz, Public Watchdogs’ Director of Development, is skeptical, saying that “Given Holtec’s cavalier safety record, which involves selling nuclear waste canisters with broken internal parts, you have to ask, is Holtec investing in cannabis, or are its workers getting high on their own supply?
What were they smoking?
According to Holtec’s lawsuit trusted Holtec employees embezzled money from the firm in a “rogue” operation that resulted in losses from “embezzlement, self-dealing, misrepresentations, malpractice, and outright deceit.”
Apparently, a few mustache-twirling villains on Holtec’s staff persuaded their gullible CEO, Kris Singh, to pour millions of dollars into cannabis companies, according to the lawsut filed in Superior Court. Even worse, Singh’s trusted chief financial officer, (CFO), and Singh’s incompetent head of corporate counsel plunged the company into a scandal involving tax breaks offered by the State of New Jersey. The alleged fraud sparked a criminal investigation and a humiliating $5 million fine imposed by the New Jersey Attorney General.
.. and none of it was Kris Singh’s fault, according to his attorneys.
Holtec: An embezzler’s buffet
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| Embezzling Victim, Krishna Singh |
Holtec’s internal controls were so sloppy that its most trusted employees were using one of the world’s oldest embezzling techniques: Cashing checks written to an employer using fake bank accounts that use a slight variation of the employer’s actual name.
This technique was made probably easier by Krishna Singh’s practice of incorporating multiple holding companies and subsidiaries that began with the name Holtec, such as Holtec Government Services, Holtec Logistics, etc.
In fact, Public Watchdogs found at least 30 “Fake Holtecs“ in New Jersey, Delaware, and Florida, and we suspect that there are hundreds more in other states.
One of the alleged embezzlers that Holtec hired, Lonnie Davis, created a “clone” of an existing accounting firm called “CBIZ” that was incorporated as “CBIZ Consulting.” In this way, when a check came in for Krishna Singh’s CBIZ, Lonnie Davis, would cash that check at his own personal version of CBIZ called “CBIZ Consulting.”
Why crooks hire crooked people
Generally speaking, unethical people prefer to hire other unethical people. “Like attracts like,” and in the case of Holtec, birds are probably flocking together.
Holtec’s crooked past
According to the federal Office of Inspector General, Holtec paid a $50,000 bribe to a government worker who had the power to give Holtec a juicy federal contract. Holtec was also forced to pay a $2 million “administrative fee” to settle the case. Apparently, Krishna Singh thought that paying a $2 million fine made him sound disreputable, so his attorneys got the Feds to agree to call it an “administrative fee” instead of a more appropriate term such as “criminal penalty.”
It is our belief, based in the historical evidence and our experience with corporate criminals, that Holtec may have continued its practice of bribing federal bureaucrats and buying up defunct and failing nuclear power plants to gain access to billions of dollars from the enormous Decommissioning Trust Funds (DTFs) that are associated with shuttered nuclear power plants.
In February of 2022, Holtec Decommissioning International was again fined $50,000 by the NRC for falsifying documents at its newly purchased Oyster Creek facility. The purchase gives Holtec access to a one-billion dollar Decommissioning Trust Fund, or “DTF.”
Past performance predicts future results
The federal Department of Justice (DOJ) says that almost half (48%) of all white collar crimes are committed by recidivist (repeat) offenders. This statistic of 48% is far lower than the actual reality because the DOJ only tracks the criminals that are arrested and prosecuted at least twice. The DOJ has no way of tracking the criminals who are smart enough to avoid arrest and conviction in the first place. Nonetheless, there is one thing we do know: Krishna Singh was smart enough to sniff out the alleged thieves on his own staff. As the saying goes, “It takes a thief to catch a thief.”
According to Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear, “The stakes at play in trusting this company [Holtec] are staggering, yet we just keep getting these warning signs. You have to wonder why Holtec keeps having what appear to be stunning lapses of character,” says Kamps, who summarizes the lawsuit as a scheme where Holtec’s CEO (Krishna Singh) hired two executives who cooked up tax break schemes and made bad investments. “How much more evidence do we need that something is amiss?” Kamps said.
New Holtec claims
Holtec’s latest lawsuit says that employees Robert Galvin and Andrew Ryan hoodwinked a gullible Krishna Singh into paying them $710,00 in finders’ fees for advice on cannabis and other investments. In addition, Galvin, Ryan, and the CBIZ accounting firm arranged the failed tax dodge that sparked an investigation by the New Jersey Attorney General, and that it was forced to sign an agreement that implicated Krishna Singh and another one of his many shell companies.
“Perhaps Holtec should change its slogan from ‘A generation ahead by design,’ to ‘Designed by a generation of heads,” says Charles Langley, the Executive Director of Public Watchdogs, a public advocacy group with a focus on nuclear safety.
New lawsuit filed by top Holtec executives
On June 1st of 2023, Holtec’s former Chief Financial Officer Kevin O’Rourke sued Holtec claiming that he was fired after refusing to allow his name to be used as the author of a deceptive prospectus for a proposed Consolidated Interim Storage Facility (“CISF”) for nuclear waste storage facility. According to O’Rourke, Holtec’s own internal estimates showed that the CISF would lose $150 million per year.
But according to Patrick O’Brien, a Holtec spokesperson, Holtec is a victim of “politically motivated investigations” by the State of New Jersey. He further claims that the company works vigorously to fight dishonesty and wrongdoing at Holtec. “One of the reasons that Holtec is pursuing the case against its former CFO and general counsel is that it does not tolerate ethical lapses from any employees, no matter their status at the company,” O’Brien said in a written statement to the New Jersey Monitor.
Given the short tenure of Holtec employees Public Watchdogs predicts that Mr. O’Brien will probably be fired soon.