US federal prosecutors have accused the president of Smartmatic of bribing election authorities in the Philippines to maintain and expand the election technology company’s footprint in the country.
The Justice Department said in a press release Thursday that Roger Piñate, the president and a co-founder of Smartmatic, forged invoices and contracts in the late 2010s to help pay $1 million to Andres Bautista, the former head of the election commission. of the Philippines.
Smartmatic became a household name after the 2020 US election, when allies of then-President Donald Trump falsely accused it — and its rival election technology company Dominion Voting Systems — of rigging votes to benefit themselves. President Joe Biden.
In reality, Smartmatic’s technology was only used in one county during the 2020 election, Los Angeles.
But the indictment could still help Fox News, Newsmax and other defendants in Smartmatic’s multiple defamation lawsuits. Those defendants have argued that the scandal — not the election-rigging allegations — caused Smartmatic to lose the contracts.
The indictment against Piñata has not yet been made public. The Justice Department press release released Thursday detailing the charges did not allege that Smartmatic’s technology was used to manipulate votes.
The Justice Department says Piñate, along with another Smartmatic employee, laundered funds by inflating the cost of every voting machine used in the 2016 Philippine elections. Prosecutors say the bribery scheme involved bank accounts in Asia, Europe and Florida, where the case was brought.
Prosecutors say that through bribes from Bautista — a co-defendant in the case — Smartmatic maintained and expanded its election services in the 2016 election.
According to CNN, Bautista awarded Smartmatic $199 million in contracts for the 2016 Philippine presidential election.
In a statement, Smartmatic said the indicted employees were placed on leave and emphasized that the Department of Justice did not allege any voter fraud.
“No voter fraud has been alleged and Smartmatic has not been sued,” the company said in a statement. “Voters around the world need to be assured that the elections they participate in are conducted with the utmost integrity and transparency. These are the values Smartmatic lives by.”
After the 2020 election, Smartmatic and Dominion both launched civil defamation suits against Trump allies and right-wing media organizations that pushed false claims about the companies.
Smartmatic filed lawsuits still pending against Fox News, Newsmax, former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, and others. Some of the lawsuits are being funded by Reid Hoffman, a LinkedIn co-founder and Democratic Party donor.
Giuliani and Powell both pushed a false conspiracy theory that Smartmatic and Dominion were somehow in cahoots with each other to rig votes. In addition to suing them, Smartmatic sued the media organizations it said allowed these claims to go unchallenged.
Fox News paid $787.5 million last year to settle claims brought by Dominion, avoiding a trial.
Smartmatic agreed to settle a defamation lawsuit against One America News, another right-wing media company, earlier this year.
Most of the other cases from both companies are ongoing.
Smartmatic has a small domestic presence but a much larger international business than Dominion. In court filings, she has said her canceled international contracts in the wake of false claims about the 2020 election mean she should receive even greater damages.
But some of her defamation lawsuits have been thwarted by claims of wrongdoing in the Philippines. Information about the bribery allegations was revealed in court filings last year in the lawsuit Smartmatic filed against One America News.
In 2023, the COMELEC – the Philippines’ election commission – banned Smartmatic over the scandal, but the decision was overturned earlier this year by the country’s supreme court.
The defendants in the Smartmatic defamation cases have argued that Smartmatic has greatly overstated the amount of damages it says it should receive.
They say Smartmatic’s overseas contract dealings and other issues with the company — not their claims about the company’s role in the 2020 election — have led to the loss of business.