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Tag: Venezuela government

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

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    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.”

    Fox questions Smartmatic’s dealings in LA

    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.”

    LA clerk deposed about trip, gifted meal

    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.

    Prosecutors claim bribe paid in Venezuela

    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.”

    ___

    Peltz reported from New York.

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  • Colombia, Venezuela open key binational bridge as ties warm

    Colombia, Venezuela open key binational bridge as ties warm

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    BUCARAMANGA, Colombia — Colombia and Venezuela on Sunday opened a key bridge linking the countries that had been closed for almost seven years amid political tensions, launching an era of improved relations under Colombia’s new leftist president.

    Delegations led by Colombian trade minister Germán Umaña and the governor of Venezuela’s Tachira state, Freddy Bernal, met in the middle of the “Tienditas” bridge linking Tachira and Colombia’s Norte de Santander state for the opening ceremony.

    “From today, all the border crossings are open for transport,” said Bernal, adding that the political will existed to continue improving relations between the neighbors.

    Construction of the bridge ended in 2016, but it was never inaugurated because of the political crisis between the South American countries. The bridge, which cost more than $32 million to build, was designed to ease congestion on the two other binational bridges in the area and facilitate trade.

    In 2019, Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolás Maduro ordered more than a dozen cargo containers placed on the bridge to symbolically block it to protest attempts by the opposition to bring humanitarian aid into Venezuela from Colombia.

    Diplomatic and commercial relations between Colombia and Venezuela were reestablished in September following the inauguration of Gustavo Petro – a former guerrilla – as Colombia’s president.

    Petro’s predecessor, Iván Duque (2018-2022), had called Maduro a “dictator” and made Colombia one of 50 countries that recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president, charging that Maduro’s re-election had been fraudulent.

    ”Tienditas” was the last remaining crossing linking the countries to be reopened along their 2,200-kilometer (1,367-mile) border following the restoration of relations.

    “In political terms, ‘Tienditas’ is the symbol of the recovery of dialogue between the two countries,” said Ronal Rodríguez, a researcher at the Venezuela Observatory in Colombia’s Universidad del Rosario.

    Pedro Benítez, a political analyst and professor at the Central University of Venezuela, told The Associated Press the key symbol of the restoration of relations was the first face-to-face meeting between Petro and Maduro in November.

    Benitez said the reestablishment of trade relations between the neighbors so far has been “very bumpy” because incoming Colombian products have been very expensive due to “non-institutional obstacles attributed to Venezuelan officials.”

    The resumption of commercial ties began with the enabling of traffic across the Simón Bolívar and Francisco de Paula Santander bridges in September. From then until November, 385 trucks passed over the bridges, most from Colombia into Venezuela carrying products such as medical supplies, fiber optics, textiles, toilet paper and cardboard. Coiled steel, motors and pipes were transported from Venezuela into Colombia.

    Between January and October 2022, total trade between the two countries reached $512 million, an increase from $394 million in all of 2021, but still a long ways from the $7 billion in bilateral trade seen in 2008.

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  • US judge rejects Maduro ally’s claim of diplomatic immunity

    US judge rejects Maduro ally’s claim of diplomatic immunity

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    MIAMI — A federal judge in Miami on Friday rejected attempts by a close ally of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to shield himself from criminal charges, ruling Alex Saab isn’t entitled to diplomatic immunity in the U.S. and must stand trial on accusations of money laundering.

    The l egal fight over Saab’s purported diplomatic status was being closely watched by Maduro’s socialist government, which has demanded the release of the Colombian-born businessman as part of furtive negotiations with the Biden administration.

    The U.S. in 2019 stopped recognizing Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate leader, and Judge Robert Scola cited that determination as a basis for rejecting Saab’s motion to dismiss the criminal charges.

    He also sided with prosecutors who raised doubts about the legitimacy of several official Venezuelan credentials that Saab relied on to bolster his claim to diplomatic status — and questioned why he never mentioned his purported diplomatic status in several secret meetings with U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents.

    “The evidence suggests that the Maduro regime and its accomplices have fabricated documents to cloak Saab Moran in a diplomatic dress that does not befit him, all in an effort to exploit the law of diplomatic immunities and prevent his extradition to the United States,” the judge wrote.

    For more than two years, almost since the time of his arrest in Africa on a U.S. warrant, Saab has insisted he is a Venezuelan diplomat targeted for his work helping his adopted homeland circumvent American economic sanctions.

    Saab, 51, was pulled from a private jet in the summer of 2020 during a stop in Cape Verde en route to Iran, where he was heading to negotiate oil deals on behalf of Maduro’s government.

    He is charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering tied to a bribery scheme that allegedly siphoned off $350 million through state contracts to build affordable housing for Venezuela’s government.

    At a hearing Tuesday, Scola pressed Saab’s legal team of seven attorneys to explain why he should depart from the position taken by the U.S. State Department, which said Saab isn’t entitled to diplomatic immunity in the U.S.

    The U.S. since 2019 has recognized opposition lawmaker Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate leader — a position repeatedly affirmed by U.S. federal courts in numerous lawsuits brought by unpaid creditors seeking to seize the country’s overseas oil assets.

    Scola likened Saab’s situation to a hypothetical situation in which former President Donald Trump — who hasn’t recognized his loss in the 2020 election — were to issue passports with the supposed imprimatur of the U.S. government.

    “It is clear that the United States does not recognize the Maduro regime to represent the official government of Venezuela,” Scola wrote. “Accordingly, any claim to diplomatic immunity asserted by a representative of the Maduro regime must also be considered illegitimate.”

    Saab’s attorney’s presented as evidence what they claim are diplomatic notes exchanged between Iran and Venezuela discussing what was to be Saab’s third trip to Iran. At the time of his arrest, Saab was also purportedly carrying a sealed letter from Maduro to Iran’s supreme leader seeking his full support for a planned deal to import fuel at a time of long gas lines in Venezuela.

    “It’s like if you were to kidnap someone, bring them to your home and then charge them with trespassing,” Lee Casey, one of Saab’s attorney, said at this week’s hearing.

    But prosecutors presented evidence that some of the documents bolstering Saab’s claim — among them a Venezuelan diplomatic passport and a presidential decree published in Venezuela’s Official Gazette — were possibly falsified.

    “At best he was a courier,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Alex Kramer said during proceedings. “But being a courier of diplomatic letters does not make one a diplomat.”

    Scola seemed to agree. He also found that even if Saab was a properly appointed special envoy, he would not be entitled to in-transit immunity under international treaties and conventions that protect only members of permanent diplomatic missions. Doing so would make a defendant automatically “untouchable” in the U.S. so long as he had a free pass from another country making him the head of a temporary mission, he said.

    “To immunize heads of temporary missions in the way Saab Moran suggests would open the door to the abuse of diplomatic immunities in a way that could seriously frustrate cross-border law enforcement activities,” Scola wrote.

    Saab was initially held up as a trophy by the Trump administration, which made no secret of its efforts to oust Maduro, who himself is wanted on U.S. drug trafficking charges.

    But the criminal case has become a major sticking point as the Biden administration seeks to improve relations with Venezuela and tap new oil supplies to make up for a loss of exports from Russia following sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine

    The tug of war has been further complicated by the revelation that Saab, prior to his arrest, had been signed up as an informant by the DEA and had been providing it with information about corruption in Maduro’s inner circle.

    For months, speculation had been swirling that Saab could walk free as part of some sort of prisoner swap for several Americans detained in Caracas. A similar deal for two nephews of Maduro convicted in New York on drug charges secured the release in October of seven other Americans detained in Venezuela. The Biden administration has insisted that no such negotiations are taking place.

    ———

    Joshua Goodman on Twitter: @APJoshGoodman

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  • Faith leaders prep for border changes amid tension, hope

    Faith leaders prep for border changes amid tension, hope

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    REYNOSA, Mexico — Two long lines of migrants waited for blessings from visiting Catholic priests celebrating Mass at the Casa del Migrante shelter in this border city, just across the bank of the Rio Grande River from Texas.

    After services ended last week, several crammed around the three Jesuits again, asking about upcoming U.S. policy changes that would end pandemic-era asylum restrictions. That’s expected to result in even more people trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, adding to the already unusually high apprehension numbers.

    “All of you will be able to cross at some point,” the Rev. Brian Strassburger told the nearly 100 Mass goers in Spanish while a Haitian migrant translated in Creole. “Our hope is that with this change, it will mean less time. My advice is, be patient.”

    It is getting harder to deliver that message of hope and patience not only for Strassburger, but also for the Catholic nuns running this shelter and leaders from numerous faith organizations who have long shouldered most of the care for tens of thousands of migrants on both sides of the border.

    Migrants here — mostly from Haiti, but also Central and South America and more recently from Russia — are deeply mistrustful of swirling policy rumors. A judge has ordered the restriction known as Title 42, which only affect certain nationalities, to end Wednesday. But the asylum restriction, which was supposed to lift in May, is still being litigated.

    Faith leaders working on the border are wary of what’s to come. They expect tensions will keep rising if new restrictions are imposed. And if not, they will struggle to host ever larger numbers of arrivals at already over-capacity shelters and quickly resettle them in a volatile political environment.

    “People are coming because it’s not long before the bridge will be opened. But I don’t think that the United States is going to say, ‘OK, all!’” said the Rev. Hector Silva. The evangelical pastor has 4,200 migrants packed in his two Reynosa shelters, and more thronging their gates.

    Pregnant women, a staggering number in shelters, have the best chance of legally entering the U.S. to apply for asylum. It takes up to three weeks, under humanitarian parole. Families wait up to eight weeks and it can take single adults three months, Strassburger explained at Casa del Migrante, where he travels from his Texas parish to celebrate Mass twice a week.

    Last week, the shelter housed nearly 300 people, mostly women and children, in tightly packed bunk beds with sleeping pads between them. Men wait in the streets, exposed to cartel violence, said Sister Maria Tello, who runs Casa del Migrante.

    “Our challenge is to be able to serve all those who keep coming, that they may find a place worthy of them. …Twenty leave and 30 enter. And there are many outside we can’t assist,” said Tello, a Sisters of Mercy nun.

    Edimar Valera, 23, fled Venezuela with family, including her two-year-old daughter. They crossed the notoriously dangerous Darien Gap, where Valera nearly drowned and went without food. After arriving in Reynosa and escaping a kidnapping, she found refuge at Casa del Migrante, where she’s been since November despite having a sponsor ten miles away in McAllen, Texas.

    “We need to wait, and it could be good for some and bad for others. One doesn’t know what to do,” she said, finding some comfort in Mass and daily prayers, where she begs God for help and patience.

    So does Eslande, 31, who left Haiti for Chile. She is on her second attempt to cross into the U.S. after not finding there the right help for her young son’s learning disability. At Casa del Migrante just a day, she read the Gospel aloud in Creole during Mass, a reminder of happier times when her father distributed Communion.

    “I have faith that I will be going in,” she said in the Spanish she’s learned en route. Like many migrants, she only gave a first name fearing for her safety.

    Tensions are rising faster than hope as it’s unclear who will be able to cross first.

    “Any change could grow the bottleneck,” said the Rev. Louie Hotop, dropping off hygiene donations at one of Silva’s shelters — a guarded, walled camp with rows of tents pitched tightly together.

    Even if Title 42 is lifted and thousands more are allowed to enter the U.S., asylum seekers would still face enormous backlogs and slim approval chances. Asylum is granted to those who cannot return to their countries for fear of persecution on specific grounds — starvation, poverty and violence don’t usually count.

    It’s a long, uncertain road ahead even for the roughly 150 migrants at a barebones welcome center in McAllen, Texas, where the Jesuit priests stop after their Reynosa visits. Families legally admitted to the United States, or apprehended and released, rested in the large Catholic Charities-run hall before traveling to join sponsors.

    Lugging their Mass kit and heavy speakers, the priests offered migrants spiritual and practical help– like writing “I’m pregnant. Can you ask for a wheelchair to bring me to my gate?” on a paper for a Honduran woman eight months pregnant with her first child and terrified about airport travel.

    “It’s a way of listening, of supporting, it’s not so much resolving the immediate problem,” the Rev. Flavio Bravo said. “They bring stories of trauma, of life, that we must give value to.”

    Sister Norma Pimentel, a prominent migrant rights advocate who first helped border crossers four decades ago and now runs Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, said religious people should push for centrist reform to help migrants — not make them political pawns.

    “Policies don’t respond to the realities we’re facing,” said Pimentel, who opened the welcome center in 2014 for the first big asylum surge of this century. “It’s impossible to help everyone … but who are we to limit the grace of God?”

    Now, the busiest crossing is some 800 miles away in El Paso, Texas, and neighboring Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Ronny, 26, turned himself into U.S. authorities there and was flown to McAllen because “around Juarez it was collapsing,” he said last week at Pimentel’s shelter.

    He and his family left Venezuela on foot in September because he opposed his country’s regime and his wages were too low to afford food. He has a U.S. immigration appointment next month in New York where his sponsor lives, but no money to get there.

    On his first free night in the U.S., he turned to God, following Mass from a distance so he wouldn’t leave the thin mat where his children slept.

    “We ask God for everything. Always,” he said.

    ———

    Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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  • Biden eases Venezuela sanctions as opposition talks resume

    Biden eases Venezuela sanctions as opposition talks resume

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    WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Saturday eased some oil sanctions on Venezuela in an effort to support newly restarted negotiations between President Nicolás Maduro’s government and its opposition.

    The Treasury Department is allowing Chevron to resume “limited” energy production in Venezuela after years of sanctions that have dramatically curtailed oil and gas profits that have flowed to Maduro’s government. Earlier this year the Treasury Department allowed the California-based Chevron and other U.S. companies to perform only basic upkeep of wells it operates jointly with state-run oil giant PDVSA.

    Under the new policy, profits from the sale of energy would be directed to paying down debt owed to Chevron, rather than providing profits to PDVSA.

    Talks between the Maduro government and the “Unitary Platform” resumed in Mexico City on Saturday after more than a yearlong pause. It remained to be seen whether they would take a different course from previous rounds of negotiations that have not brought relief to the political stalemate in the country.

    A senior U.S. administration official, briefing reporters about the U.S. action under the condition of anonymity, said that easing the sanctions was not connected to the administration’s efforts to boost global energy production in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and that the decision was not expected to impact global energy prices.

    The official said the U.S. would closely monitor Maduro’s commitment to the talks and reserved the right to reimpose stricter sanctions or to continue to ease them depending on how the negotiations proceed.

    “If Maduro again tries to use these negotiations to buy time to further consolidate his criminal dictatorship, the United States and our international partners must snap back the full force of our sanctions that brought his regime to the negotiating table in the first place,” said Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a statement.

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