Smartmatic, the electronic-voting company, decried Venezuela’s socialist regime for cheating in a 2017 election and a few months later announced it would stop running elections in the South American country after 13 years.
But documents from Venezuela’s National Electoral Council obtained by the Miami Herald show that Smartmatic licensed its software for use in three other elections after that, at least two of them secretly: the municipal elections of December 2017 and the disputed presidential election of May 2018.
Sources consulted for this story said the use of Smartmatic software in the municipal and the presidential elections was meant to be kept under wraps, and that Venezuelan officials and company executives agreed to use another company to hide Smartmatic’s involvement.
“They literally used a third company to hide the participation of Smartmatic, but it was Smartmatic that provided the technicians to... have the software ready to use in the voting machines,” a source who was on the National Electoral Council at the time told the Herald.
Two other sources who served on the electoral council and have first-hand knowledge of the 2017 and 2018 elections confirmed the story. They asked not to be named because they fear for the safety of their family members still in Venezuela.
An audit of the election software ahead of the 2018 presidential election was signed by Smartmatic software Associate Manager Juan Valera, who appeared in the audit as one of two outside advisors, but whose main reason for traveling to Caracas from Panama was to install the certificate for the voting machines and to activate the voting software, the sources told the Herald.
Valera did not respond to emails from the Miami Herald seeking comment.
The sources told the Herald that the decision to work with a third party, an Argentine company named Ex-Cle, was made after both the National Electoral Council and Smartmatic had publicly announced that the software company would no longer participate in Venezuelan elections.
The electoral council announced its decision a few days after Smartmatic denounced the Venezuelan government for committing fraud in the National Constituent Assembly election. The CNE “is developing a relationship with another company that is going to provide us with the technical support services”, the president of the CNE at the time, Tibisay Lucena, said at a press conference held on Aug. 16, 2017, where she announced that the council was “ending its relationship with Smartmatic.”
Contacted by the Herald, Smartmatic, whose co-founder and president lives in South Florida, initially denied that its software had been used in Venezuela after it announced it was pulling out of the country.
“Smartmatic software has not been used in any election in Venezuela since the National Constituent Assembly elections in 2017, when Smartmatic publicly denounced that the National Electoral Council reported voter turnout data different from that reflected in the system,” the company told the Herald in an email.
But the company’s position changed when it was told the Herald had the audits showing Smartmatic’s software was used in Venezuelan elections after it claimed it had pulled out of the country.
In a subsequent email to the Herald, the company did not deny that its software was used in the two elections held in the last quarter of 2017 — the regional election in October and the municipal election in December — as well as in the 2018 presidential election. But the company said software could not be authentically considered as Smartmatic because the company did not participate in its use.
“No Smartmatic software can be considered authentic unless Smartmatic is involved in every step of the chain of custody throughout all election deployment phases — not just in the software license delivery,” the company told the Herald. “Smartmatic software is only authentic if Smartmatic is also involved in the voting machine and tally configuration, installation, deployment, and audit of the election results. This involvement did not occur after the 2017 National Assembly Elections.”
However, in a public statement in Spanish on its own website in July 2020, Smartmatic categorically said it had never provided any services – including the use of its software – to the Venezuelan government after pulling out of the country in 2017.
“Smartmatic has not provided voting machines, licenses for the use of its software, or electoral services of any kind to the CNE [National Electoral Council] nor has it participated in any audit process since it reported that the CNE had published results different from those processed by the automated platform in the elections for the National Constituent Assembly held on July 30, 2017,” the 2020 statement said.
The company did not respond to questions about why Valera, its software manager, had traveled to Caracas ahead of the regional election of October 2017 and of the presidential election of May 2018 to provide certificates needed to run the company’s programs.
The Herald sources who had worked at the electoral council confirmed that the software used in the three elections that followed the July 30 of 2017, National Constituent Assembly election was Smartmatic’s, despite the company’s claims to the contrary. Copies of the software audits obtained by the Herald show the company’s participation as well.
In the 2018 presidential election, Valera also signed as an outside advisor, but the sources told the Herald he was there as the representative of Smartmatic running the process alongside Ex-Cle and the electoral council’s representatives, explaining each step of the audit and answering any questions that arose. There is no indication that Valera participated in any post-election audits of the results in any of these elections.
The sources told the Herald they believed that Valera signed as an “outside advisor” in an attempt to hide the role that Smartmatic had in the election. There was also an effort, the sources believed, to hide the government’s payment to Smartmatic for the software use. The payment was made through Ex-Cle.
In a statement on Smartmatic’s website dated Oct. 20th, 2017, the company said it “did not provide any products or services of any kind for the regional elections,” but that it “simply delivered its software to the National Electoral Council, in the presence of the political parties, for a source code audit” to fulfill contractual obligations.
A “source code audit,” conducted in front of the different political parties involved, validates that the software to be installed in the voting machines has not been tampered with and that it complies with the standards set by technicians from each party.
‘Inmediate rupture’Smartmatic’s role in the 2017 and 2018 Venezuelan elections fly in the face of the comments the company made right after the election of the members of the constituent assembly.
In a press conference held in Caracas right after the vote, Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica echoed what members of the opposition had been saying all along — that the Venezuelan socialist regime was capable of cheating.
“Based on the robustness of our system, we know, without any doubt, that the turnout of the recent election for a National Constituent Assembly was manipulated,” Mugica said at the time. “We estimate the difference between the actual participation and the one announced by the authorities is at least one million votes.”
A few months later, the company announced that it was pulling out of the country.
“This episode led to an immediate rupture of the client-provider relationship,” the company said in March 2018.
The company added that it could not verify the accuracy of the elections held in the last quarter of 2017 — the regional and municipal elections — because it had not certified its software to be used in them. “Since the company was not involved in these processes, and given the fact that the company’s products are not under warranty and were not certified for those elections, Smartmatic cannot guarantee the integrity of the system, nor can it attest to the accuracy of the results,” it said.
In response to a previous version of this story appearing in the print edition of the Herald, Smartmatic lawyer J. Erik Connolly said the company never acted in a covert or underhanded manner, and said that the decision to provide Venezuela with licenses for its software was made under duress.
To show its adversarial relations with the Venezuelan government, company officials pointed to an arbitration claim that Smartmatic filed in June 2022 at the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes, a World Bank entity, accusing the regime of making threats against the company and its employees after it decided to quit the country.
“Smartmatic did nothing in secret,” Connolly said in a letter to the Herald. “As stated in an arbitration filed by Smartmatic against Venezuela, the company, under coercion, delivered the software license and signed the hand-off during the customary ceremony conducted by the national authority to initiate the election process.”
The arbitration claim, however, was registered in 2022 — four years after the 2018 presidential election.
Transfer of fundsThe Venezuelan opposition, backed by more than 50 countries including the United States, said Maduro’s 2018 reelection was a fraud and declared opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president of Venezuela. The international community ratcheted up sanctions already adopted against the regime and its leaders for, among other things, undermining the country’s democratic system.
While currently headquartered in London, Smartmatic was originally founded in 2000 by three Venezuelans. The company’s first big break came soon afterwards, when the Venezuelan government, headed by then-president Hugo Chavez, chose Smartmatic to replace the country’s voting machines ahead of his reelection in 2004.
According to a confidential report written by Argentina’s Financial Information Unit, a government agency that investigates money laundering in the country, Ex-CLE received a 70 million euro payment from Venezuela’s election council in 2017. That report, initially made public by news website Infobae, states that the Argentine company made at least two transfers of funds in April 2018 for $182,645 to a bank account in the Netherlands belonging to Smartmatic.
Ex-Cle, which ended up replacing Smartmatic as the official software provider for Venezuelan elections, paid a high price for its connection to the Maduro regime. In December 2020 the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on the company “for supporting the illegitimate President of Venezuela... including by providing goods and services that the Maduro regime used to carry out the fraudulent December 6, 2020, parliamentary elections.”
“The illegitimate Maduro regime’s efforts to steal elections in Venezuela show its disregard for the democratic aspirations of the Venezuelan people,” said Treasury’s secretary at the time, Steven T. Mnuchin. “The United States remains committed to targeting the Maduro regime and those who support its aim to deny the Venezuelan people their right to free and fair elections.”
Emails sent by the Miami Herald to a Ex-Cle representative went unanswered.
Bribery chargesSmartmatic was in the spotlight again in August, after a federal grand jury in South Florida indicted Roger Piñate, founder and president of the company , on charges of committing foreign corruption and money laundering to secure elections contracts in the Philippines.
Piñate, 49, a Boca Raton resident, was charged along with Jorge Miguel Vasquez, 62, of Davie, the company’s former vice president of hardware development, with paying $1 million in bribes to the former chairman of the Philippines’ Commission on Elections, Juan Andres Donato Bautista.
“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 U.S. Justice Department said in a news release.
Court records, including a Homeland Security Investigations criminal complaint, indicate that Smartmatic’s contracts with the Philippines were worth $199 million for providing voting machines and other services for the May 2016 election for president, vice president and other positions.
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this story appearing in the print edition of the Miami Herald on Sept. 1, 2024, incorrectly stated that Smartmatic officials were not available to answer questions regarding this story.
This story was originally published October 8, 2024, 5:00 AM.
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