Environmental Progress (EP) has learned that two top former aides to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo worked with a major Cuomo campaign contributor, the natural gas company Competitive Power Ventures, to close Indian Point nuclear plant.

The New York Times reported today that Indian Point's operator had agreed to close the plant, bowing to intense pressure from Cuomo.

Mention of the episode is an a federal criminal indictment filed by Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, on September 22, 2016.

"Based on my review of publicly available documents and my interviews of witnesses," wrote the US attorney, "including employees of [Competitive Power Ventures], the importance of the [CPV Valley Energy Center] to the State depended at least in part, on whether [Indian Point] was going to be shut down."

The indictment suggests that Competitive Power Ventures and the Cuomo administration both recognized that if Indian Point were taken off line, it would be replaced by natural gas, not imported hydro and wind, as an anonymous source told the New York Times.