Southern Company executives meet in Atlanta amid promises of "sunshine and transparency" as mounting racketeering scandal closes in from all directions

Alabama Power headquarters in Birmingham

 

Southern Company executives have been meeting in Atlanta yesterday and today in an apparent effort to regroup and make plans for the racketeering scandal that seems to be engulfing them from all sides. That is from a breaking-news report late yesterday at DonaldWatkins.com. According to Watkins, Alabama Power CEO Jeff Peoples has promised employees that they will receive "sunshine and transparency" from him. 

Watkins reports that top Alabama Power employees are documenting Peoples' demands to cover themselves in case the sun does not shine and the transparency does not materialize. Under the headline "Sunshine and Transparency: Southern Company Regrouping in Atlanta," Watkins writes:

Yesterday, the Southern Company held the first of two days of meetings with its officers, companywide. Senior management executives attended the meeting from Alabama Power Company, Georgia Power Company, and Mississippi Power.

The meeting started at noon (on March 20, 2023) at the Georgia Tech Conference Center and will continue until noon today (March 21, 2023).

Immediately after Jeff Peoples was appointed CEO of Alabama Power Company on January 5, 2023, he held internal meetings with Alabama Power executives and employees where he promised them that “what ya’ll are going to get from me is sunshine and transparency.”Watkins even includes an audio clip of Peoples making the promise in his own voice. (Click on this link and scross just past the third paragraph.)

Is there a high level of trust from employees? It does not sound like it, as Watkins writes:

Alabama Power Company employees are very uncomfortable with Jeff Peoples, but they are meeting his leadership demands. After all, Peoples is their new CEO.

However, top Alabama Power employees have been documenting Peoples’ demands to cover themselves in the event things at the company blow up because they know that Jeff Peoples funded all the Joe Perkins/Matrix "dirty tricks" projects, with absolutely no accountability.

Perkins’ Southern Company-related work assignments are the subject of multiple media and law-enforcement investigations in multiple states. Perkins handwritten notes have also implicated Southern Company in a massive $27-billion, multi-year accounting-fraud scheme.

Watkins addresses the questions that appear to be on employees' minds -- and he concludes with some of his own advice for Peoples and other top dogs:

Here are the “sunshine and transparency” questions many Southern Company executives want answered at Tuesday’s meeting, along with some pertinent background facts for raising these questions: 1. How much total money has Southern Company, acting by and through Alabama Power, Georgia Power, and Mississippi Power, paid Joe Perkins/Matrix to have street hustlers like Steve Flowers (Troy, Alabama) and Bill Britt (Montgomery, Alabama) attack an African-American critic and corporate ethics advocate like me?

It is an established fact that Southern Company and its affiliates have paid millions of dollars to Joe Perkins for decades, via multiple “no invoicing” contracts, to: (a) execute drive-by character assassinations of critics, and (b) corrupt local, state, and federal public officials. Based upon Southern Company financial records, board minutes, and certain regulatory agency records I have reviewed to-date, not one dime of this Perkins/Matrix money was disclosed to Southern Company board members or state and federal utility regulators, as required by law. 2. Did Joe Perkins/Matrix use portions of his/its Southern Company contract dollars to hire private investigators to: (a) spy on Southern Company executives and others, (b) pay fake news sites like Alabama Political Reporter and Yellowhammer News to publish Matrix-generated propaganda pieces that masquerade as “news,” and (c) run smear campaigns against Public Service Commissioners in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi? 3. What other smear campaigns and "dirty tricks" operations did Joe Perkins and his affiliated companies perform using Southern Company shareholder and ratepayer money? Where are the publicly available files of Perkins' contract deliverables? Did auditors Deloitte & Touche have access to the Perkins off-site files of contract deliverables?

4. Has Southern Company’s board of directors conducted a forensic audit of the funds paid to Joe Perkins, his affiliated companies, and his subcontractors? If so, what did this audit find? If not, why not? What has Southern Company disclosed to major institutional investors like the Vanguard Group, Inc. and BlackRock Inc. about Joe Perkins’ scope of work for the company and its affiliates? 5. How much is Southern Company paying Perkins now, and for what services (other than attacking me)?

For the sake of Southern Company's loyal executives and employees, its investors, and customers, please answer these questions at Tuesday morning's meeting. A great company will come apart at the seams if top Southern Company executives do not deliver Tuesday on Peoples' promise of "sunshine and transparency."

Please come clean with your executives tomorrow! They don't need another Kum Ba Yah session like they experienced on Monday.