One of the most powerful Republican politicians in the US state of Ohio, the president of the State House of Representatives Larry Householder, was arrested by the FBI and charged with being the “brain” of a criminal group that received “bribes” in the amount more than $60 million to support and ensure the passage of a law requiring Ohio home energy consumers to pay on their monthly bills subsidies to save two nuclear power plants and several coal-fired power plants from bankruptcy, owned by a local utility giant listed on the stock exchange, according to Profit.ro.

“This is probably the most comprehensive bribery and money laundering scheme ever against Ohio citizens,” Southern Ohio Federal District Attorney David M. DeVillers told a news conference, according to The New York Times. Along with Householder, a former head of the Ohio branch of the Republican Party, Matt Borges, close to former governor John Kasich, was also arrested, as well as a number of 3 strategists, consultants and lobbyists who had worked for Householder.

According to investigators, the energy company FirstEnergy, renamed Energy Harbor after successfully going through an insolvency and reorganization procedure that began in 2018, financed with $38 million an NGO that used the money to pay the costs of election campaigns of a number of 21 Republican candidates in the 2018 Ohio state parliamentary elections.