A federal indictment has charged three current and former executives of Smartmatic in a scheme to pay more than $1 million in bribes to put its voting machines in the Philippines, a setback for a company that has been feuding with allies of Donald Trump over unsubstantiated claims that it manipulated the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
The Justice Department in a statement Thursday said Smartmatic’s Venezuelan-born co-founder Roger Piñate and a colleague at the Boca Raton, Florida-based company funneled bribes to the chairman of the Philippines’ electoral commission through a slush fund created by overcharging for the cost of each voting machine it supplied authorities.
