MIAMI – Smartmatic, the company specializing in election technology and currently suing Fox News for defamation, is facing an increasing number of criminal allegations involving some of its executives. This includes a recent accusation from federal prosecutors about a “slush fund” used for bribing foreign officials, purportedly funded partly by proceeds from selling voting machines to Los Angeles.
These new revelations about the criminal case emerged from recent court filings in Miami. Last year, the company’s co-founder, Roger Pinate, along with two Venezuelan colleagues, were charged with bribing officials in the Philippines to secure a contract for overseeing the 2016 presidential elections there. Pinate, who is no longer associated with Smartmatic, has entered a not-guilty plea.
To support the case, federal prosecutors are planning to present evidence indicating that part of the nearly $300 million paid by Los Angeles County to upgrade its voting systems was redirected to a fund controlled by Pinate using overseas shell companies, false invoices, among other methods.
Smartmatic hasn’t been charged with any illegal activities, nor have U.S. prosecutors accused either Smartmatic or its executives of manipulating election results. Likewise, they have not accused Los Angeles County officials of any wrongdoing or stated whether those officials were aware of the alleged bribery operations. County representatives maintain their lack of awareness.
The case against Pinate coincides with Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox for defamation, claiming Fox aired false statements that the company was complicit in manipulating the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Fox argues that it was reporting newsworthy claims.
Smartmatic said the Justice Department’s new filing was filled with “misrepresentations” and is “untethered from reality.”
“To be clear, Smartmatic secures business because we excel in our field,” the company stated. “We conduct ourselves ethically and comply with all laws at all times, in Los Angeles County and everywhere we operate.”
Fox questions Smartmatic’s dealings in LA
Still, Fox has gone to court to try to get more information about L.A. County’s dealings with Smartmatic. The network has long tried to leverage the bribery allegations to undermine Smartmatic’s narrative about its business prospects – a key component in calculating any potential damages — and portray it as a scandal-plagued company brought low by its own legal problems, not Fox’s broadcasts.
South Florida-based Smartmatic was founded more than two decades ago by a group of Venezuelans who found early success working for the government of the late Hugo Chavez, a devotee of electronic voting. The company later expanded globally, providing voting machines and other technology to help carry out elections in 25 countries, from Argentina to Zambia.
It was awarded its contract to help with Los Angeles County elections in 2018. The contract, which Smartmatic continues to service, gave the company an important foothold in what was then a fast-expanding U.S. voting-technology market.
But Smartmatic has said its business tanked after Fox News gave President Donald Trump’s lawyers a platform to paint the company as part of a conspiracy to steal the 2020 election.
Fox itself eventually aired a piece refuting the allegations after Smartmatic’s lawyers complained, but it has aggressively defended itself against the defamation lawsuit in New York.
“Facing imminent financial collapse and indictment, Smartmatic saw a litigation lottery ticket in Fox News’s coverage of the 2020 election,” the network’s lawyers said in a court filing.
Smartmatic has disputed Fox’s characterization in court filings as “lies” and “another attempt to divert attention from its long-standing campaign of falsehoods and defamation.”
LA clerk deposed about trip, gifted meal
As part of its effort to investigate Smartmatic’s work in Los Angeles, Fox has sued to force LA County Clerk Dean Logan to hand over public records about his dealings with Smartmatic’s U.S. affiliate.
Fox’s lawyers also questioned Logan in a deposition about a dinner a Smartmatic executive bought for him at the members-only Magic Castle club and restaurant in Los Angeles and a Smartmatic-paid trip that Logan made to Taiwan in 2019 to oversee the manufacturing of equipment by a Smartmatic vendor. U.S. prosecutors claim that vendor was deeply involved in the alleged kickback scheme in the Philippines. The five-day trip included business class airfare, hotel and numerous meals as well as time for sightseeing, Fox said.
“The trip’s itinerary demonstrates that the trip was not a financial inspection or audit. It was a boondoggle,” Fox said in court filings.
Logan, who did not report the gifts in his financial disclosures, said in his 2023 deposition that the meal at the Magic Castle was a “social occasion” unrelated to business and that he was not required to report the trip to Taiwan because his visit was covered by the contract.
Mike Sanchez, a spokesman for Logan’s office, said in a statement that the bribery allegations are unrelated to the company’s work for L.A. County and that the county had no knowledge of how the proceeds from its contract would be used. All of Smartmatic’s work has been evaluated for compliance with the contract’s terms, Sanchez added, and as soon as Pinate was indicted he and the other defendants were banned from conducting business with the county.
As for the trip to Taiwan, Sanchez said another county official joined Logan for the trip and the two conducted several on-site visits and conducted detailed reviews of electoral technology products that were required prior the start of their manufacturing. Logan’s spouse accompanied him on the trip, but at the couple’s own expense, the spokesman added.
“Unfortunately, this is an attempt to use the County as a pawn in two serious legal actions to which the County is not a party,” Sanchez said.
Smartmatic has settled two other defamation lawsuits it brought against conservative news outlets Newsmax and One America News Network over their 2020 U.S. election coverage. Settlement terms weren’t disclosed.
Prosecutors claim bribe paid in Venezuela
U.S. prosecutors in Miami have also accused Pinate of secretly bribing Venezuela’s longtime election chief by giving her a luxury home with a pool in Caracas. Prosecutors say the home was transferred to the election chief in an attempt to repair relations following Smartmatic’s abrupt exit from Venezuela in 2017 when it accused President Nicolas Maduro ‘s government of manipulating tallied results in elections for a rubber-stamping constituent assembly.
Smartmatic has denied the bribery allegations, saying it ceased all operations in Venezuela in 2017 after blowing the whistle on the government and has never sought to secure business there again.
“There are no slush funds, no gifted house,” the company said. Instead, it accused Fox of engaging in “victim-blaming” and attempts to use “frivolous” court filings “to smear us further, twisting unproven Justice Department allegations.”
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Peltz reported from New York.
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