MIAMI (AP) — A federal indictment accuses three current and former Smartmatic executives of paying more than $1 million in bribes to install voting machines in the Philippines. Fighting with Donald Trump’s allies Regarding the unfounded claims that the 2020 US presidential election was rigged.
The Department of Justice statement Smartmatic announced on Thursday that its Venezuelan-born co-founder Roger Piñate and colleagues at the Boca Raton, Florida-based company had funneled bribes to the head of the Philippine Commission on Elections through a slush fund created by overcharging the cost of each voting machine they supplied to the agency.
The Justice Department said in a statement that the payments, made between 2015 and 2018, were made to win business from the Philippines and secure timely payment for that work, but, like the indictment, did not name Smartmatic.
To conceal corrupt payments to former Philippine Commission on Elections chairman Juan Donato Bautista, the conspirators allegedly created a slush fund (code-named “Philippine Pot” by investigators) and created false loan agreements to justify transfers to bank accounts in Singapore, Hong Kong, Switzerland, New York and Florida. Approximately $1 million of the illicit payments was used to purchase real estate for Bautista’s family in San Francisco.
The investigation into the Smartmatic executive began in 2017 when Mr. Bautista’s wife told investigators in the Philippines that her husband had amassed an unexplained fortune of $20 million, some of it in a pile of cash found at his home.
Bautista was arrested last year on a criminal complaint from Miami that accused him of accepting bribes in exchange for awarding an unnamed company a nearly $200 million contract to supply tens of thousands of Taiwan-made voting machines and related services in the 2016 presidential election. Before his arrest, he denied receiving money from Smartmatic or any other entity. However, Philippine authorities barred Smartmatic from bidding on contracts to provide election technology in the 2025 elections.
Smartmatic said in a statement that it had placed the two employees on administrative leave effective immediately.
“There have been no allegations of voter fraud and Smartmatic has not been charged,” the company said in a statement. “Voters around the world should be confident that the elections in which they participate will be conducted with the utmost integrity and transparency.”
Piñate co-founded Smartmatic more than 20 years ago, and the company’s early success was largely due to winning a major contract in Piñate’s native Venezuela from the government of Hugo Chavez, an early supporter of electronic voting. The company has since expanded globally, helping run elections in 25 countries, from Argentina to Zambia to several European countries.
In 2017, Smartmatic severed all ties with Venezuela after accusing the government of President Nicolas Maduro of manipulating voter turnout in the country’s Constituent Assembly elections. Smartmatic claimed the government’s reported turnout was inflated by approximately one million votes.
Piñate and Jorge Miguel Vásquez, who also served as Smartmatic’s president, were each indicted on one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of five years. Both men, who live in South Florida, were indicted on multiple counts of money laundering, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, along with Elie Moreno, a dual Venezuelan-Israeli citizen who managed Smartmatic’s relationship with the Philippines.
On his LinkedIn profile, Pignate touts Smartmatic’s company motto: “Protecting election integrity is at the core of what we do.”
Smartmatic sued Fox News for airing false claims that software developed by the company changed the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election. In April, another conservative media outlet, One America News Network, settled similar claims with Smartmatic for undisclosed terms.
The man reportedly funding Smartmatic’s costly defamation lawsuit is LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the charges against Smartmatic executives.
Smartmatic has sued several Trump allies, including Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, but the lawsuit against him is pending. His bankruptcy case It will be played.
From Fox News We’re screwed The lawsuit also named hosts Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, and former host Lou Dobbs as defendants, and removed Smartmatic from the case. An appeals court dismissed the lawsuit against the network’s parent company, Fox, but Smartmatic refiled the suit.
All of the software accused of changing the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election was developed 10 years ago by a US affiliate of Smartmatic.
Fact checkers at the Associated Press and other media outlets Debunked unfounded claimsHowever, Trump lawyer Sidney Powell appeared on Fox News shortly after the election and accused Maduro’s former chief of staff of masterminding a “cyber Pearl Harbor” involving Smartmatic.
Smartmatic’s technology was only used in one precinct in Los Angeles County, California, during the 2020 US presidential election, and the company has no ties to Dominion Voting Systems, a rival company that the Trump campaign has accused of conspiracy.
Fox countersued under New York law that bars unfair lawsuits from being brought to silence reporting or commentary on public matters. Tried in vain To dismiss those counterclaims.