Mayor-President Josh Guillory and City-Parish Attorney Greg Logan are asking Louisiana State Police to investigate Lafayette Utilities System and LUS Fiber after an allegation that computer files were deleted, possibly to cover up a crime.

In a letter to Louisiana State Police, Logan said administrators believe four Lafayette Consolidated Government employees placed on leave Wednesday have knowledge of alleged wrongdoing. He redacted their names from a copy of the letter sent to news media, but revealed the name of one person who allegedly has knowledge, former long-time LUS Director Terry Huval, who retired in 2018.

It's the latest development in a nearly two-year saga centered on alleged improper payments by LUS to its fiber division, allegedly to financially prop up the fledgling city-owned telecommunications operations.

Success! An email has been sent with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request.

+2 Latest LUS Fiber allegations handed over to Louisiana Public Service Commission Results of an internal investigation suggesting LUS Fiber may have improperly overcharged other Lafayette Consolidated Government departments …

In a letter sent Thursday to Lt. Col. Kevin Reeves, superintendent of Louisiana State Police, Logan said he and Guillory "believe certain individuals at LUS and LUS Fiber are guilty of injuring public records, theft, malfeasance and/or criminal mischief," all of which are violations of state law.

"We further believe there may be additional crimes uncovered when a thorough external criminal investigation is conducted," he wrote.

Lafayette Consolidated Government officials, Logan wrote, conducted a limited investigation after receiving a whistleblower complaint. The investigation identified the five people with knowledge of the situation, including Huval and four current LUS employees who were advised not to discuss the matter with anyone, including the news media.

Computer files and email archives, Logan wrote, were destroyed and accounting or public finance records may have been manipulated. For example, he said, Huval had 17,000 emails in 2012 and 46,000 emails in 2014. But in 2011, his computer showed only 455 emails, Logan said. Between 15,000 and 20,000 of Huval's emails appear to have been deleted for 2011.

That's the time frame, Logan wrote, in which email communications took place over two cross-departmental transactions, the power outage monitoring system and sewer lift stations, in which LUS allegedly overpaid LUS Fiber for services, which were reported to the Louisiana Public Service Commission and allegedly are under PSC investigation.

"I hope everybody's name is cleared," Guillory said Thursday during his weekly radio show on KPEL. "If there was criminal activity, I want to know. I want the truth to come out. I think the people deserve that."

Lafayette Parish Councilman Josh Carlson, who took office Jan. 6, said he was in a meeting with Guillory on Wednesday when CAO Cydra Wingerter interrupted and discussed the receipt of a whistleblower complaint from an LUS employee saying they had first-hand knowledge that someone at LUS was planning to delete or had deleted emails between Huval and others at LUS "to basically cover their tracks."

Carlson, whose area of expertise is information technology, said he advised Guillory that in the corporate world, the employee would be removed from having access to the equipment in such a case.

"When you're talking about deleting emails and servers, that’s never good," Carlson said. "My concern was LUS and fiber are operated as a semi-government agency and they get the benefit of being under LCG but haven't had oversight or accountability like government would.

"No one has been able to see what's been going on," Carlson added. "This coming out makes you question what's going on. If there’s smoke, many times there’s fire."

LUS and LUS Fiber undergo an annual independent audit and additional audits by the Louisiana Public Service Commission. Independent engineering consultants also monitor their operations, including for compliance with bond ordinance requirements, and until January, six City-Parish Council members with primarily city residents in their districts provided oversight by sitting as the Lafayette Public Utilities Authority. Now, the City Council will provide that oversight.

Also on Thursday, Guillory hired Carr Riggs & Ingram CPAs and Advisors to conduct a full forensic audit of LUS, its finances and affiliate transactions, which are transactions between the various divisions of LUS, such as fiber, electric, water.

“LUS is a critical asset of Lafayette Consolidated Government, representing almost half of our financial activity,” he said in a prepared statement. “We have to be confident that we know everything that is happening — operationally and financially at LUS. We need an unbiased, independent view of the situation at LUS so that we can apply the right remedy, restore the confidence of ratepayers and assure its integrity for financial markets."

Guillory, during the KPEL radio interview Thursday, also said Lafayette Police conducted a raid at LUS in the fall of 2019 under former Mayor-President Joel Robideaux's administration and confiscated computers.

However, some council members questioned whether such a raid actually occurred.

City Council Chairman Pat Lewis, who served on the former City-Parish Council and LPUA, said Thursday he had no knowledge of a raid until hearing it on the news.

Former City-Parish Councilman Bruce Conque, who was chairman of the LPUA, also said he never heard about a raid under Robideaux. Sources advised him Lafayette Police were requested to provide one officer to accompany state auditors while they were at LUS last year, he said, but no computers were confiscated.

City Councilwoman Liz Hebert, who served on the City-Parish Council and LPUA, said she met with Guillory on Wednesday along with some LUS and LCG employees about the mayor-president's proposal to have the LUS Fiber IT department report to the LCG IT department, supposedly for efficiency and to save money. There was no mention of a raid or deleted emails, she said, nor did she hear about the alleged raid of LUS in 2019.

Hebert said she told Guillory she wants to wait until a full forensic audit is conducted before reorganizing the IT operations.

"Let’s hire a new LUS director before we do this," she said, "rather than rushing it through and the audit finding things and we have to back track."

In October, Robideaux shuffled the top directors at LUS and the telecommunications division, replacing Interim LUS Director Jeff Stewart, a veteran employee at LUS, with his CAO Lowell Duhon, who has no experience in utilities. Robideaux said at the time the assignment, which came with a large pay increase, was temporary so Duhon could conduct an investigation. Robideaux sent the results of the investigation to the PSC in December. Duhon remains interim director of LUS.

In 2018, it was learned that LUS for years had been paying its fiber division for services that were never used. City-Parish officials reported the incidents to the Louisiana Public Service Commission because LUS fiber, which provides internet, television and telephone service to customers, is prohibited from relying on local government to unfairly support its operations.

Robideaux later discovered additional instances of questionable payments and operations involving LUS and LUS fiber, both of which were under the direction of Huval. Robideaux and the City-Parish Council decided to remove oversight of the fiber operations from the LUS director and name a director over that division.

The incidents allegedly led millions of LUS dollars to be spent on fiber operations.

Huval and Stewart declined to comment for this story. Wingerter, contacted via text message, said she and Guillory were in a meeting. They did not return a call for this story.