Prosecutors link LA contract to Smartmatic ‘slush fund’ as voting tech firm battles Fox in court

MIAMI (AP) – Smartmatic, the elections-technology company suing Fox News for defamation, is now contending with a growing list of criminal allegations against some of its executives – including a new claim by federal prosecutors that a “slush fund” for bribing foreign officials was financed partly with proceeds from the sale of voting machines in Los Angeles.

The new details about the criminal case surfaced this month in court filings in Miami, where the company’s co-founder, Roger Pinate, and two Venezuelan colleagues were charged last year with bribing officials in the Philippines in exchange for a contract to help run that country’s 2016 presidential elections. Pinate, who no longer works for Smartmatic, has pleaded not guilty.

To buttress the case, federal prosecutors are seeking to introduce evidence they argue shows that some of the nearly $300 million the company was paid by Los Angeles County to help modernize its voting systems was diverted to a fund controlled by Pinate through the use of overseas shell companies, fake invoices and other means.

Smartmatic itself hasn’t been charged with breaking any laws, nor have U.S. prosecutors accused Smartmatic or its executives of tampering with election results. Similarly, they haven’t accused Los Angeles County officials of wrongdoing, or said whether they were even aware of the alleged bribery scheme. County officials say they weren’t.

But the case against Pinate is unfolding as Smartmatic is pursuing a $2.7 billion lawsuit accusing Fox of defamation for airing false claims that the company helped rig the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Fox says it was legitimately reporting newsworthy allegations.

Smartmatic said the Justice Department’s new filing was filled with “misrepresentations” and is “untethered from reality.”

“Let us be clear: Smartmatic wins business because we’re the best at what we do,” the company said in a statement. “We operate ethically and abide by all laws always, both in Los Angeles County and every jurisdiction where we operate.”

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.”

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.

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.