Holtec VP was fired after CEO told him ‘nothing short of an act of God would force me to fire you,’ lawsuit says
The lawsuit offers a window into Holtec’s C-suite as the company braced for possible indictment by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office in January 2024.

When Holtec International agreed to pay a $5 million fine last year to avoid facing criminal charges over a New Jersey tax credit application, it seemed like a clean resolution to a yearslong legal headache.
Then the energy technology company sued its outside accounting firm, accusing it of giving bad advice that prompted the criminal probe and damaged Holtec’s reputation. The suit also alleged an accountant formed a shadow company with Holtec’s former chief financial officer and general counsel to embezzle funds.
Now Holtec’s tax credit saga is the subject of another lawsuit, this one filed by a former top executive who says he was made a scapegoat for the whole mess and wrongfully fired — just moments after the CEO allegedly told him “nothing short of an act of God would force me to fire you.”
The suit by Martin J. Babos Jr., Holtec’s former vice president of finance and accounting, alleges his ex-employer and CEO Krishna P. Singh violated a New Jersey whistleblower protection law. Holtec said in a statement to The Inquirer that Babos “strangely seems to forget memorializing his resignation and demand for over a million dollars in an email he sent to the CEO the night before his alleged ‘termination’ meeting.”
The company, which has two manufacturing plants and an engineering facility on a 50-acre campus in Camden, added that it is “considering counterclaims against Babos for this filing of frivolous claims as well as financial damages incurred with the identification of more than $800,000 in uncashed checks to Holtec located in Babos’ desk drawers after he left, some dating back almost a decade.”
Bracing for possible indictment
Babos’ suit, filed in Camden County Superior Court last week, offers a window into Holtec’s C-suite as the company braced for possible indictment by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office in January 2024.
That’s in part because the company, which specializes in nuclear fuel storage, worried it would lose out on a $1.5 billion loan opportunity with the federal government to restart a shuttered nuclear power plant in Michigan, with a planned announcement in the works for the following month, according to the suit.
U.S. Department of Energy officials “advised us they plan to do an official announcement on Feb. 21 in Detroit regarding the loan and restart of Palisades,” J. Scott Thomson, Holtec senior vice president and governance officer, wrote in a Jan. 23, 2024, email to colleagues, according to the suit.
In a meeting with senior executives that month, the suit says, Holtec president Kelly Trice said “he would be able to control the narrative [to secure the $1.5 billion loan] provided the company was not indicted.”
Holtec’s nonprosecution agreement
Companies routinely settle litigation to protect broader business interests. And Holtec ultimately signed a nonprosecution agreement in which it admitted no wrongdoing, paid the fine, and agreed to retain an independent monitor to review any future applications for state benefits. Holtec said at the time that it agreed to settle “under threat of unfounded retaliatory criminal prosecution.”
As part of the agreement, the Attorney General’s Office was allowed to publish documents outlining the conduct uncovered during the investigation, which stemmed from Holtec’s $12 million investment in a battery producer and subsequent application in 2018 for $1 million in state tax credits to be split with a related company.
In fact, the nonprosecution agreement said, Holtec was eligible for only $500,000 in incentives, but the company had tried to double the award by telling the state that Holtec and the related company, Singh Real Estate, had each invested $6 million in the battery producer “as of” July 2018 — even though Singh had not invested at that time.
It was in the agreement’s fine print that Babos was harmed, the suit says, because it made multiple references to “a Holtec Vice President of Finance and Accounting.”
A “simple internet search” revealed that to be Babos, the suit says, “which essentially has destroyed Babos’ career.”
In a Jan. 30, 2024, news release, Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin said the agreement sent “a clear message: no matter how big and powerful you are, if you lie to the state for financial gain, we will hold you accountable — period.”
And by allowing the state to reference Babos by his job title, the company was complicit in enabling Platkin to brand him as “a defrauder, liar, exploiter, and manipulator,” the suit says, adding that the agreement included multiple false allegations and misrepresentations.
Babos believed “agreeing to a false narrative to protect another public treasury opportunity” — the loan from the Department of Energy — might violate a New Jersey statute that criminalizes falsifying and tampering with records.
‘Visibly angry’
The following morning, Jan. 31, during a meeting with CEO Singh, Babos “expressed his alarm that Holtec executed a [nonprosecution agreement] that had false allegations, for all intents and purposes singled out Babos, and for the ulterior purpose of preserving the $1.5 billion loan with the Department of Energy,” the suit says.
That’s when Singh allegedly told Babos nothing short of divine intervention would cause the CEO to fire him.
Singh shared with Babos a draft opinion article that he allegedly planned to submit to The Inquirer, titled “The Deplorable Legal Transgressions of New Jersey’s Attorney General.” The unpublished article, attached as an exhibit to the lawsuit, repeated that the claims against Holtec were “utterly baseless” and blasted Platkin, an appointee of Gov. Phil Murphy, as “the embodiment of the corrupt and venal Murphy administration.”
The opinion piece also said there was a “strong case” to seek Platkin’s disbarment after he leaves office.
As the meeting went on, however, Singh became “more visibly angry and dismissive of Babos’ refusal ‘to play along,’” and the CEO demoted and then fired him, the suit says.
Since he was fired on Feb. 1 last year, Babos alleged, he has applied to more than 150 jobs without getting a single call back.
Peter Nakonechni, an attorney with Rubin, Fortunato & Harbison P.C. who represents Babos, declined to comment.
Holtec said in a statement that before his “termination meeting” with Singh, Babos in an email “explicitly described his resignation and attempted to negotiate an exorbitant severance package of $1,425,000 — demanding $800,000 upfront and $125,000 annually for the next five years.”
“In the same email, Mr. Babos proposed working as a consultant for Holtec post-departure, offering to assist with any ongoing legal cases at a rate of $115 per hour,” Holtec said.
As for the Michigan nuclear plant, the Energy Department said in September that it had finalized the loan agreement with Holtec.