WASHINGTON. United States Federal prosecutors have charged several executives from the Smartmatic voting machine company in connection with a bribery and money laundering scheme related to the 2016 Philippine elections.
On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that a federal grand jury has indicted Roger Piñate, a Venezuelan citizen residing in Boca Raton, Florida, and Jorge Miguel Vasquez, a U.S. citizen living in Davie, Florida. The indictment alleges that between 2015 and 2018, Piñate and Vasquez, along with other co-conspirators, “caused at least $1 million in bribes to be paid” to Juan Andres Donato Bautista, the former chairman of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) in the Philippines.
The DOJ stated, “These bribes 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.”
According to the indictment, the co-conspirators created a slush fund by inflating the cost per voting machine for the 2016 Philippine elections. “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,” the DOJ added.
The indictment further claims that the Philippine government signed contracts totaling $182 million for the sale or lease of approximately 90,000 electronic voting machines. The executives allegedly over-invoiced the cost per machine and used some of the extra funds to pay bribes to Bautista.
Piñate and Vasquez face charges of 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 also 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 stated.
In response, Smartmatic released a statement saying, “Smartmatic has learned that two of our employees have been indicted for alleged violations of the FCPA in the Philippines almost 10 years ago. 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.”
Gary P Hernal started college at UP Diliman and received his BA in Economics from San Sebastian College, Manila, and Masters in Information Systems Management from Keller Graduate School of Management of DeVry University in Oak Brook, IL. He has 25 years of copy editing and management experience at Thomson West, a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters.
