Former Bonneville Pacific Chief Executive Officer Raymond Hixson pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count each of tax perjury and making a false statement to a financial institution.
Hixson pleaded guilty to perjury because he told the Internal Revenue Service on his 1986 return that he did not have a financial interest in a foreign corporation. At the time, Hixson and others each had personal accounts in Sallah, a Panamanian company they used to shelter income from taxes.He pleaded guilty to making a false statement to Security Pacific National Bank when he applied for a $42 million construction loan for Bonneville Pacific. The loan was to build the Atlas power project in Rifle, Colo.
Hixson didn't tell the bank that he had received a finder's fee for bringing the project to Bonneville Pacific.
The finder's fee was transferred offshore to Sallah.
Hixson, 69, entered the plea in exchange for prosecutors' promise that they would seek only six months home confinement and no fine for his crimes. The two crimes carry a combined maximum penalty of five years in prison and $500,000 fines.
Hixson has already paid $1 million to Bonneville Pacific trustee Roger Segal to settle Segal's civil claims against him.
He has also agreed to help Segal pierce an $800,000 family trust Hixson set up called the Ray Hixson Charitable Uni-Trust, said Vern Hopkinson, Segal's attorney.
"If we can terminate the trust, his wife will get half and we will get half," Hopkinson said.
Hixson's plea leaves only one Bonneville Pacific defendant out in the cold. Former Parsons, Behle and Latimer attorney David Hirschi has been indicted for his role in the scandal but has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to stand trial in September.
All other defendants have agreed to assist prosecutors at such a trial.
Hirschi refuses to enter a guilty plea partly because prosecutors want him to plead guilty to a felony as the other defendants did, said Ken Brown, Hirschi's attorney.
The Utah Supreme Court could revoke Hirschi's license to practice law if he either pleads guilty to or is convicted of a felony.
The other reason: He's innocent, Brown said. Hirschi is Bonneville Pacific's former in-house counsel, working closely with insiders Hixson, Wynn Johnson, Robert Wood, Jack Dunlop and Carl Peterson.
"In his mind, he was working for the greatest group of people he had ever met," Brown said. Hirschi trusted their integrity. "These guys wouldn't do something that's illegal."
That fear that those same men may testify against Hirschi in September is troubling, Brown acknowledged. "It makes us uncomfortable."
Could Hirschi plead guilty, possibly closing the door to any Bonneville Pacific criminal trial? "I never say `never,' " Brown said.