Smartmatic founder, ex-VP surrender in Miami bribery case tied to Filipino voting machines
Roger Piñate, the Venezuelan-American founder of the voting-machine company Smartmatic, surrendered to authorities and faced charges Monday in Miami federal court of committing foreign corruption and money laundering to secure elections contracts in the Philippines.
Piñate, 49, president of Boca Raton-based Smartmartic, was charged along with Jorge Miguel Vasquez, 62, of Davie, the company’s former vice president of hardware development, who also surrendered on Monday.
Piñate was granted a $8.5 million dollar bond and later released, but he did not enter a plea to an indictment because his defense attorney, Curt Miner, has yet to become his permanent lawyer. He could not be reached for comment.
Vasquez was given a $1 million bond and also released. He pleaded not guilty to the foreign corruption and money laundering charges in the indictment.
His defense attorney, Frank Rubino, said it was premature to comment on the indictment, which was returned by a federal grand jury on Thursday.
“It’s so early in the case,” Rubino told the Miami Herald. “But we have been aware of this investigation since 2019.”
Both Piñate and Vasquez are accused of paying $1 million in bribes to the former chairman of the Philippines’ Commission on Elections, Juan Andres Donato Bautista, 60, who is also named in the indictment.
Court records, including a Homeland Security Investigations criminal complaint, indicate that Smartmatic’s contracts with the Philippines were worth $199 million for providing voting machines and other services for the May 2016 election for president, vice president and other official positions.
Federal authorities said the alleged co-conspirators financed the bribes by overbilling the cost per voting machine for the elections. To conceal the operation, the co-conspirators used coded language in referring to a slush fund that was used to make the illicit payments, and they created fraudulent contracts and sham loan agreements to justify the transfers, the Justice Department said, citing the indictment filed by prosecutor Robert Emery.
The co-conspirators then allegedly laundered bribery payments through bank accounts located in Asia, Europe, and the United States, including in the Southern District of Florida, according to the indictment.
Piñate, Vasquez, Bautista and Elie Moreno, 44, a dual citizen of Venezuela and Israel who oversaw Smartmatic’s contracts in the Philippines, are each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and three counts of international laundering of monetary instruments.
Piñate, Vasquez, Bautista and Moreno each face a maximum penalty of 20 years if convicted of those charges.
If convicted, Piñate and Vasquez each also face a maximum penalty of five years in prison for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and conspiracy to violate the FCPA.
Probe began with wife
The federal probe in South Florida was launched after Bautista’s wife in August 2017 informed the Philippine National Bureau of lnvestigation that her husband had “large amounts of unexplained wealth,” according to the HSI criminal complaint filed last year. She informed the Bureau’s Anti-Fraud Division that her husband had approximately one billion Philippine Pesos, or approximately $20 million of ill-gotten wealth.’‘
According to published reports, they were going through a divorce at the time.
Piñate, alongside Venezuelans Antonio Mugica and Alfredo José Anzola, founded Smartmatic in 2000, and gained notoriety after the company was chosen by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez to replace the country’s voting machines in 2004. The company grew by acquiring the much larger Sequoia Voting Systems in 2006, though the company later announced that it had divested its stake in that company.
A Smartmatic spokesman said in a statement Monday that two company executives, including Piñate, have been placed on a leave of absence, though he noted that “our accused employees remain innocent until proven guilty.”
“No voter fraud has been alleged, and Smartmatic is not indicted,” the spokesman said. “Still, voters worldwide must be assured that the elections they participate in are conducted with the utmost integrity and transparency.”
Smartmatic became a household name after false claims were made about the company being involved in vote rigging during the U.S. presidential election in 2020. Smartmatic filed a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News in 2021. The case is expected to go to trial in New York next year. A similar defamation case against the conservative network Newsmax is scheduled to go to trial in Delaware in September.
This story was originally published August 12, 2024 at 5:29 PM.
