Smartmatic Added to Bribery Indictment of the Company’s Executives
Smartmatic, the voting technology company, was added on Thursday to a Justice Department indictment that alleged that some of the company’s executives were involved in a scheme to bribe an election official in the Philippines.
The defendants are accused of funneling $1 million in bribes, from 2015 to 2018, to the man who led the Philippine elections commission for most of that time in order to obtain contracts.
In August 2024, prosecutors charged Roger Piñate, Smartmatic’s president and co-founder, and another executive, Jorge Vasquez, with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bans corporate bribery overseas. Mr. Piñate, Mr. Vasquez and Elie Moreno, a former Smartmatic executive, along with the former elections commission chairman, Juan Andres Bautista, were also charged with money-laundering violations.
The superseding indictment, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, adds criminal charges of money laundering and foreign bribery against Smartmatic itself.
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