Co-founder of Smartmatic voting machine company charged with paying bribes for Philippine contracts

A federal grandy jury in Miami has charged the Venezuelan co-founder of a voting machine company targeted by allies of former President Donald Trump with paying more than $1 million in bribes to officials in the Philippines in exchange for contracts overseeing the island nation’s 2016 election. The Justice Department in a statement Thursday says Roger Pinate and a colleague at Boca Raton, Florida-based Smartmatic 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.