The co-founder of a Venezuelan voting technology firm is facing allegations of bribery raised by federal prosecutors in Florida. Roger Piñate, who co-founded Smartmatic with Antonio Mugica in 2000, is currently charged with money laundering and bribery regarding contracts the company had in the Philippines, allegedly in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
The federal government has accused Piñate and his co-defendants, all executives of “Company 1” of paying more than a million dollars in bribes to Juan Andres Donato Bautista, the Chairman of the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC). The bribes were “paid to obtain, maintain and receive payments on a lucrative contract to provide voting machines…to the government of the Philippines for its May 2016 national and local elections.” The contract was valued at $182 million.
To support their case, federal prosecutors will introduce “witness testimony, photographs, and text communications” to show that Tibisay Lucena Ramirez, an employee of the Venezuelan National Election Council (CNE), was also paid a bribe for “assistance with Company 1’s status as an election services provider in Venezuela going forward” after Smartmatic pulled out of Venezuela following the country’s 2017 elections. During those elections, alleged fraud was uncovered and Smartmatic pointed the finger at the Maduro regime.
Piñate allegedly gave Lucena Ramirez an upper-middle class home with a pool in Caracas in order to assist with “Company 1’s” status as an election provider in Venezuela. Prosecutors assert that they have text communications between Piñate and others discussing the transfer of the title to Lucena Ramirez through a third party “to conceal the source and nature of the transfer.”
Lucena Ramirez passed away in 2023.
Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica held a press conference in Venezuela in 2017 where he admitted that the Venezuelan elections were tampered with.
“Even in moments of deep political conflict and division, we have been satisfied that the voting process and the count has been completely accurate. It is therefore with the deepest regret that we have to report that the turnout numbers on Sunday, 30th of July for the Constitutent Assembly in Venezuela were tampered with. Based on the robustness of our system, we know without any doubt, that the turnout of the recent election…was manipulated. It is important to highlight that similar manipulations are made in manual elections in many countries. But they go undetected because of a lack of electronic security and auditing safeguards.”
Mugica did not cite any examples of manual counts that have been tampered with. Mugica expands on what happened during the press conference below:
Feds say Smartmatic bribed Venezuela’s top election official with luxury home
— Jennifer Asper (@j3669) August 5, 2025
The case against Piñate and his co-defendants has not yet been assigned a trial date.
Pinate-VenezuelaBribeAllegationDocument by CannCon on Scribd
The post Smartmatic Executive Accused by Feds of Bribing Venezuelan Election Chief Following 2017 Fraudulent Elections in Venezuela appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.