MANILA – Former Commission on Elections (Comelec) chairperson Andres Bautista and several others have been indicted by a US federal grand jury in Florida for alleged bribery and money laundering scheme in relation to the 2016 polls.
In a statement, the US Department of Justice said Bautista received at least $1 million in bribes between 2015 and 2018 from a certain Roger Alejandro Piñate Martinez and Jorge Miguel Vasquez, who are both foreign nationals residing in Florida.
The statement did not mention the name of the election voting machine and service provider company, but Bautista awarded $199 million in contracts to Smartmatic to supply about 92,000 voting machines and to handle the results of the Philippines’ national and local elections in 2016.
Piñate is listed as the company’s president and he holds a seat on its global Board of Directors.
Vasquez is reportedly the Vice President for External Operations at Smartmatic.
“These bribes were allegedly paid to obtain and retain business related to providing voting machines and election services for the 2016 Philippine elections and to secure payments on the contracts, including the release of value added tax payments,” the press release read.
The respondents allegedly funded the bribes through a slush fund that was created by over-invoicing the cost per voting machine for the 2016 Philippine elections, the US DOJ added.
“To conceal and disguise the nature and purpose of the corrupt payments, the co-conspirators used coded language to refer to the slush fund and caused the creation of fraudulent contracts and sham loan agreements to justify transfers,” it said.
It further stated the co-conspirators then allegedly laundered funds related to the bribery scheme through bank accounts located in Asia, Europe, and the United States, including in the Southern District of Florida.
Bautista, Piñate, Vasquez, and Elie Moreno, who is identified on the Smartmatic website as the company’s vice president of the global services unit, could face a maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment for each count of international laundering of monetary instruments and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
But the US DOJ clarified that “an indictment is merely an allegation and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Comelec chairman George Garcia has disqualified Smartmatic from participating in the bidding for the 2025 automated election system, but the Supreme Court overturned this./PN
