By Kyle Whitmire and John Archibald

On one end of the money pipe is a Tennessee real estate mogul and financier with a national network of political connections and a plan to turn a half-built nuclear power plant in northeast Alabama into an operational, private, money-making enterprise.

On the other end of the pipe is a scandal-plagued Alabama governor under investigation by an alphabet soup of federal and state agencies.

In between them is a network of political action committees created to muddle the sources of funds as they move from donors to politicians.

But make no mistake, these two men -- Franklin Haney and Gov. Robert Bentley -- are connected, and each has done favors for the other.

Just the traceable donations from Haney's businesses to Bentley's last campaigns total about $300,000, much of which moved into Bentley's campaign account after the last election was over. Again, that's only what's easily traceable. That campaign account subsequently paid the salary of Rebekah Caldwell Mason, the governor's senior political advisor with whom he is accused of having an affair.

Meanwhile, the governor has helped Haney, too, finalizing a state lease in Haney's Birmingham office building which costs the state $5 million a year.

And more recently, the governor threw his support publicly behind the sale of a partially built nuclear power plant currently owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority north of Scottsboro.

Who is Franklin Haney?

If you were putting Haney's career on the dust jacket of a memoir, it might begin something like this: "He began as a Bible salesman, going door-to-door to put himself through college, and he didn't stop pitching, selling, wheeling and dealing until he was a billionaire."

Chattanooga developer Franklin Haney is shown on Aug. 3, 2001, in Chattanooga, Tenn. Haney presented a financing deal to the Tennessee Valley Authority. (AP Photo/Chattanooga Times Free Press, Jeff Guenther)

After finishing law school, Haney attempted a career in politics, but when he met the cool reception of Tennessee voters, he quickly figured out that there was a much more lucrative life to be lived as a politically connected real estate developer.

Haney's best job description might be "government's landlord." Through a network of companies, many of which are difficult if not impossible to identify, Haney has used sophisticated tax-exempt financing, leasebacks and public-private partnerships to build a real estate empire throughout the Southeast, with state and federal government agencies as his biggest tenants.

And campaign contributions. Lots and lots of campaign contributions.

In 2014, one of his companies donated $1 million to the Senate Majority PAC, which supports the campaigns of Democrats.

Haney and his wife put at least $2 million behind President Barack Obama's reelection in 2012.

In 1998, a federal grand jury indicted Haney on 42 counts of violating federal campaign finance laws for donations he arranged for the Clinton-Gore campaign, but a year later he won acquittals on all charges.

While most of his donations go to Democrats, the shifting politics of the South has led Haney to help Republicans, too.

Among those are Bentley and former Alabama Gov. Bob Riley.

Three Alabama campaigns, and change

In political money laundering, political action committees are the washing machines, mixing funds from multiple sources so that when they emerge on the other side it can be difficult, if not impossible, to trace that cash back to where it came from.

Sometimes, though, it's relatively easy -- like when an incoming donation, say for $18,750, corresponds with an identical and almost simultaneous contribution to a candidate.

That's what happened in one flurry of donations last year. Haney's companies contributed four donations of $18,750 each to four different PACs on February, 25, 2015. Two days later, those same four PACs each gave Gov. Robert Bentley's campaign fund $18,750.

Again, that's only the traceable money, but this sort of thing has happened often.

In 2006, Haney passed at least $130,000 through PACs to then-Gov. Bob Riley.

Four years later, Haney moved $90,000 to Bentley through the same channels.

And in the most recent election cycle, Bentley's re-election campaign received at least $200,000 through such transactions -- $75,000 of which moved to Bentley after the election, when the governor was raising the money he'd later use to pay Mason's salary during his second term.

Haney's name has popped up repeatedly in recent months as investigators and lawmakers have sought to learn more about the money paid into ACEgov, a shadowy 501(c)4 that also was used to supplement the pay of Mason.

Asked this week if he contributed to ACEgov, Haney referred questions to his lawyer.

"You'd have to ask Roger Bates," he said. "I don't do political contributions."

Attempts to reach Bates, a lawyer at Hand Arendall and a lobbyist for the Alabama two-year college system, failed.

When Haney was asked if he had contributed to Birmingham campaigns, however, he said he had not given to politicians in the city for "a long time."

The former Birmingham Social Security Building has all the aesthetic charm of a parking deck. (Tamika Moore | tmoore@al.com)

Government's landlord

On the north side of downtown Birmingham stands an office building with the aesthetic known among architects as Brutalism, which is to say it looks an awful lot like a parking deck.

Originally a home for the Social Security Administration's regional offices, Haney coordinated its financing with tax-exempt bonds and built it on city-owned property in 1974. In 1991, Haney bought the property for $7.2 million, which Birmingham used to finance its Civil Rights Institute, and after Social Security moved to a new Birmingham office development in 2008, Haney began looking for new tenants.

In his last year in office, Riley approved a 30-year lease for the Alabama Department of Human Resources to relocate there, a deal which currently costs the state more than $5 million a year. That lease was finalized in 2012, after Bentley had taken office.

Haney, too, has pitched the building's remaining vacant floors to the City of Birmingham as a potential new Birmingham Police Department headquarters. At the same time he has plied Birmingham elected officials with campaign contributions, including $129,000 to six city council members in 2013.

"It's not a lot of money to me," Haney said of the contributions then, while denying they were meant to sway the city council into making a deal.

While Haney's Birmingham office development has been conspicuous and lucrative, compared to some of his other projects -- some realized, others not -- it is relatively minuscule.

"The financial wizard operates his real estate empire through difficult-to-trace limited liability companies and real estate partnerships," the investigative nonpartisan nonprofit Sunlight Foundation said in a report on Haney's business and political activity. "It is virtually impossible to know how much Haney's government leases are worth because it's next-to-impossible to determine how many he holds."

But according to his own website, his company's holdings are worth at least $10 billion. Personally, he bought a 28,000-square-foot Palm Beach mansion which first belonged to the Vanderbilts and a $50 million Italian-made yacht. In 2005, he made an unsuccessful $450 million bid on the Washington Nationals baseball team.

He's come a long way from selling Bibles.

Tennessee Valley Authority's Bellefonte Nuclear Plant site Thursday, June 2, 2011 in Hollywood, Ala. (The Huntsville Times/Eric Schultz)

Going nuclear

But of all Haney's projects, none is as ambitious, expensive or potentially dangerous as the designs he has set for an unfinished nuclear power plant north of Scottsboro.

Construction began more than 40 years ago on the Bellefonte Nuclear Generating Station. If you're fishing on Lake Guntersville, you might see its two massive cooling towers looming above the treeline. But despite the more than $6 billion TVA has poured into the project, the plant has never produced enough electricity to power so much as a light bulb.

TVA halted most construction there in 1988 and decided last year to abandon the plant after it estimated the cost of completion at another $11 billion.

However, one man hasn't given up on Bellefonte -- Haney.

Damien Power, with TVA, looks up inside one of the two 500-foot cooling towers at the partially finished reactor at TVA's Bellefonte Nuclear Plant site Thursday, June 2, 2011 in Hollywood, Ala. (The Huntsville Times/Eric Schultz)

A decade ago, Haney first proposed buying the plant and completing its construction under a leaseback with TVA. Despite tepid interest from TVA, he has amended his proposals over time and recruited at least one former TVA official to help him craft new plans.

Stephen Smith, the executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, says that Haney's enthusiasm for the project is delusional.

"The first concrete was poured in 1974," he said. "That reactor is approaching 50 years old. Do you think the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is going give a license for a reactor that has been sitting around for 50 years?"

Nonetheless, Haney has been undeterred. In 2013, he told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that he could put $10 billion into the plant and have a $25 billion asset when it was done.

"I never give up on anything if I believe in it and eventually I think that right will win," Haney said then.

As TVA lost interest in Bellefonte, Haney's proposals shifted from a public-private partnership to full-bore privatization. He has solicited support from public officials to lean on TVA and support a sale to the highest bidder.

One of those officials was Bentley.

This year, TVA held a public comment period ahead of a final decision. Among those who spoke in favor of a sale were Bentley and Sen. Richard Shelby.

In his 2016 reelection bid, Shelby received $22,500 from Haney.

According to TVA documents, Bentley said he supported selling Bellefonte to an entity that would complete the plant, he was aware of a private party interested in completing the plant, and he thought TVA should give priority to bidders who wanted to finish its construction.

Last week, the TVA board of directors voted to put the plant up for sale.

Whether Haney's money has gone to pay Mason's salary remains to be seen. Currently, Bentley is under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigations, United States Attorneys, U.S. Postal Inspectors, the Internal Revenue Service and the Alabama Ethics Commission. Some questioned by investigators say Haney's name came up in those conversations.

Haney said he has not received a subpoena nor heard of any inquiries into his activities.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Bentley said this week that she could not answer questions about the governor's campaign finances or his 501(c)4 ACEgov.