FirstEnergy has set aside nearly $120 million in its second financial quarter to move past the House Bill 6 scandal , utility President and CEO Brian X. Tierney said on a Wednesday quarterly earnings call.
In its second financial quarter, FirstEnergy reached an “agreement in principle” with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to tentatively pay the commission a $100 million settlement, Tierney said. And the utility has reserved an additional $19.5 million as part of its efforts to resolve an investigation by the Ohio Organized Crime Investigations Commission and a civil suit by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s office, Tierney said.
The company entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in July 2021. The three-year agreement required FirstEnergy to pay a $230 million penalty − $115 million to the U.S. Treasury and another $115 million to a program for low-income utility customers administered by the Ohio Development Service Agency.
Tierney told investors Wednesday that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio filed a status report last week “confirming that FirstEnergy successfully completed the obligations it was required to perform … under the deferred prosecution agreement, including remediation measures and the implementation of a compliance and ethics program.”