By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former Ohio House of Representatives Speaker Larry Householder was sentenced on Thursday to 20 years in prison after being convicted earlier this year of participating in a $60 million bribery scheme, prosecutors said.
A federal jury convicted Householder and former Ohio Republican Party chair Mathew Borges in March.
Householder and Borges were charged in 2020 in the federal bribery case stemming from a bill passed in 2019 to bail out Ohio’s nuclear power plants after allegedly receiving industry funds for lobbying. Federal prosecutors called it the biggest corruption case in the state’s history. The legislature revoked the bill in 2021.
Following his arrest in 2020, the Ohio House of Representatives voted to remove Householder from the speakership position.
Prosecutors had alleged that energy distributor FirstEnergy gave $60 million to Generation Now, a political nonprofit operated by Householder. Those funds were used for lobbying that secured passage of the $1.5 billion bill in 2019, according to prosecutors.
Householder and Borges were convicted of participating in the racketeering conspiracy. Borges is set to be sentenced on Friday.
FirstEnergy agreed to pay $230 million in 2021 to settle U.S. government charges in the case. It admitted it paid millions of dollars to state officials to pursue legislation on nuclear subsidies and other policies that would benefit it.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
