Smartmatic executives charged in alleged Philippine bribery, money laundering scheme

Federal prosecutors have indicted a co-founder of the Smartmatic voting machine company, saying he and other executives took part in a bribery and money laundering scheme in the Philippines.

According to a Justice Department statement on Thursday, the indictment by a federal grand jury alleges that between 2015 and 2018, Roger Piñate, a Venezuelan citizen and resident of Boca Raton, Florida, and Jorge Miguel Vasquez, a U.S. citizen and resident of Davie, Florida, "together with others, allegedly caused at least $1 million in bribes to be paid" to Juan Andres Donato Bautista, the former chairman of the Commission on Elections in the Philippines.

These bribes, according to the DOJ, "were allegedly paid to obtain and retain business related to providing voting machines and election services for the 2016 Philippine elections and to secure payments on the contracts, including the release of value added tax payments."

"The co-conspirators allegedly funded the bribes through a slush fund that was created by over-invoicing the cost per voting machine for the 2016 Philippine elections," the statement continues. "To conceal and disguise the nature and purpose of the corrupt payments, the co-conspirators used coded language to refer to the slush fund and caused the creation of fraudulent contracts and sham loan agreements to justify transfers."

According to this indictment, the Philippine government signed contracts totaling $182 million for services in the sale or lease of about 90,000 electronic voting machines, Fox News senior national correspondent William La Jeunesse reported on Friday. 

The indicted executives over-invoiced or inflated the cost per voting machine for the May 2016 Philippine elections with additional fees on each unit and then used some of that money to pay bribes to Bautista, the indictment alleges.

The Justice Department said Piñate and Vasquez are each charged with one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and one substantive violation of the FCPA. Bautista, Piñate, Vasquez, and Elie Moreno, a dual citizen of Venezuela and Israel, are each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and three counts of international laundering of monetary instruments. 

"If convicted, Piñate and Vasquez each face a maximum penalty of five years in prison for the FCPA and conspiracy to violate the FCPA counts. Bautista, Piñate, Vasquez, and Moreno each face a maximum penalty of 20 years for each count of international laundering of monetary instruments and conspiracy to commit money laundering," the DOJ said.

"Smartmatic has learned that two of our employees have been indicted for alleged violations of the FCPA in the Philippines almost 10 years ago," Smartmatic said in a statement. "Regardless of the veracity of the allegations and while our accused employees remain innocent until proven guilty, we have placed both employees on leaves of absence, effective immediately. No voter fraud has been alleged and Smartmatic is not indicted. Voters worldwide must be assured that the elections they participate in are conducted with the utmost integrity and transparency. These are the values that Smartmatic lives by."