Smartmatic faces DOJ charges amid allegations of election contract bribes
By 
Adrianne Appel2025-10-20T18:07:00
Three executives of a multinational voting machine company in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump since 2020 have been indicted in Florida by the U.S. Department of Justice for allegedly paying $1 million in bribes to the Philippines top election official.
The company, SGO Corporation Limited, a U.S. business, commonly known as Smartmatic, also was charged in a superseding indictment, by a grand jury of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the DOJ said.
In the DOJ superseding indictment, the three executives, including Jorge Miguel Vasquez of Davie, Fla., and Roger Alejandro Pinate Martinez, a Venezuelan citizen living in Boca Raton and Elie Moreno, a dual citizen of Israel and Venezuela, allegedly paid the bribes to Juan Andres Donato Bautista, the former chair of the Commission on Elections of the Republic of the Philippines (COMELEC) between 2015 and 2018. Their aim was to secure a contract with COMELEC and win favorable value added tax (VAT) treatment.
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