Through a lawyer, Smartmatic brushes off as “baseless rumors” the idea that the company is or was in any way connected with the Venezuela regime.

“A U.S. company that makes touch-screen voting machines said it requested a federal investigation to dispel what it called baseless rumors of ties to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez,” NBC reports.

“Sequoia and Smartmatic are not connected, owned or controlled by the Venezuelan government whatsoever,” Jeff Bialos, a Washington attorney representing the two companies, told NBC in a telephone interview.

Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica is not interviewed, but his prepared statement from the day before appears in the article.

“Having a foreign government investing or owning a company in this country that makes voting machines could raise a question about the integrity of the elections,” says Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), who first requested CFIUS to investigate Smartmatic.

Source:
1. https://www.nbcnews.com/id

1. Why did the Smartmatic CEO say nothing about the Venezuelan regime’s (earlier) partial ownership (28%) of the company that designed Smartmatic’s software?

2. Why did Smartmatic say nothing that the Venezuelan government was its sole source of revenue in the early stages that it developed its electronic voting systems?