Media Release
For Immediate Release
February 17, 2008
Contact: Andrea Shipley
(208) 344-9161 office
(208) 514-8713 cell
Email: [email protected]
AEHI Stock Filing Late and Incorrect
Alternate Energy Holdings’ latest filing with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission on its attempt to raise money from investors for its Elmore County nuclear reactor was filed months late and did not fess up to a then pending lawsuit. Mistakes like these are characteristic of AEHI and prove the company is certainly not credible enough to build a nuclear power plant, the Snake River Alliance said.
AEHI, which hopes to convince Elmore County officials to rezone a huge piece of prime agricultural land and convert it into a heavy industrial nuclear complex, filed its most recent report to the Securities and Exchange Commission about four months late. The SEC filing comes on the heels of its lawsuit against the Snake River Alliance seeking money damages and an order requiring Alliance Executive Director Andrea Shipley to retract her statement that AEHI was “scamming Idahoans.” As such the suit fell in the category of what is known as “Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation” (or a SLAPP suit). The Alliance responded with a Motion to Dismiss the lawsuit, which showed Shipley’s opinion, was protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. AEHI backed down from its allegations, and the Court dismissed its lawsuit with prejudice. To compound its credibility problems, AEHI’s SEC filing failed to properly disclose the lawsuit.
“I’m running out of fingers to count the mistakes AEHI has made in a failed attempt to prove its credibility to Idahoans,” Snake River Alliance Executive Director Andrea Shipley said. “The company’s CEO, Don Gillispie, has failed to appear at the Legislature when invited; erected illegal towers in Owyhee County; was late in paying the $50,000 bill to Owyhee County before moving his nomad nuclear power plant 15 miles upstream to Elmore County; sued the Snake River Alliance for defamation and lost; claimed we negotiated the dismissal of the defamation lawsuit when we did not; claimed I retracted my statement even though I did not; claimed in its initial SEC registry that if a nuclear power plant was not built, it might build a coal plant on the property; filed its SEC report months late and blatantly failed to report being involved in litigation at the time the SEC report was due.”
“Idahoans have been bombarded with inaccurate and incomplete information from AEHI ever since it came to Idaho. This outfit is a distraction from the real issue at hand: Where will our energy come from in the future?” said Shipley.
Beyond the company’s tenuous finances, Idahoans will be interested in learning that the SEC filing says AEHI “Expects it is unlikely the company will be the ultimate owner or operator of any reactor to be built at the site.” Rather, AEHI hopes the plant will be owned and operated by a yet-to-be-determined consortium or joint venture made up of nuclear reactor suppliers and maybe utilities. So far, no utility has endorsed AEHI’s project.
The filing makes it clear AEHI is cash-poor and currently lacks the financing to execute its project. “The Company does not have any loan commitments,” AEHI told the SEC. Moreover, AEHI acknowledges that other nuclear reactor proposals that have far greater financial resources could better position them for the relatively scarce federal loan guarantees and other incentives, meaning AEHI’s project may well be shut out when it comes to lining up at the federal trough for federal giveaways. Or, as AEHI tells the SEC: “Under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Congress has provided production tax credits, loan guarantees, and regulatory risk insurance for the first new nuclear plants. The Project has a chance to qualify for these, but if the Project is delayed, or the schedule for other planned nuclear plants accelerates, the opportunity to get the incentives may be lost.”
The Snake River Alliance has a long history of advocating for the cleanup of the radioactive legacy from the Cold War at the Idaho National Laboratory and protecting the Snake River Aquifer that lies underneath the contamination. It also advocates clean energy alternatives to nuclear and fossil fuel power generation.
REPORTERS and EDITORS: To review a copy of AEHI’s SEC filing, go to: http://www.pinksheets.com/pink/quote/quote.jsp?symbol=AEHI#getQuote and click on “Filings.”