Three current and former executives from Smartmatic, the voting technology company suing right-wing media outlets over their 2020 election coverage, have been charged in the US in connection with an alleged bribery scheme in the Philippines. The indictment was unveiled in south Florida federal court on Friday. Prosecutors said in the press release that the indictment stems from bribes allegedly paid by Smartmatic to Andres Bautista, the former top election official in the Philippines, “to obtain and retain business related to providing voting machines and election services for the 2016 Philippine elections.” Bautista was already facing related charges in the US and is named in the new indictment, according to the press release. Smartmatic released a statement acknowledging the indictments, saying that the two executives who are still at the company have immediately been “placed on leaves of absence,” though they “remain innocent until proven guilty.” The company added, “No voter fraud has been alleged and Smartmatic is not indicted. Voters worldwide must be assured that the elections they participate in are conducted with the utmost integrity and transparency.” Even though the charges aren’t about the 2020 election, the new indictment is already making waves in the ongoing lawsuits that Smartmatic brought against conservative outlets that promoted the lie that its software rigged the 2020 US election. Fox News and Newsmax are facing defamation lawsuits from Smartmatic. Fox declined to comment. In a statement Friday, Newsmax said the allegations in the indictment were “simply shocking” and would help its defense against Smartmatic’s defamation case. “While Mr. Piñate is presumed innocent, media reports from before the 2020 election make clear that Smartmatic has a long, troubling, and questionable history,” the statement said. “Alleged corruption anywhere undermines public confidence in elections and democracy everywhere.” The far-right network OAN, which in April settled a defamation suit brought by Smartmatic, said in a statement that the indictment raises two key points. “The press has a right to report the allegations without fear of having to prove their truth at some later time in a defamation suit – but the Smartmatic officials have the right to the presumption of innocence until all the facts are determined and prove otherwise,” the statement said. Both Fox News and Newsmax deny defaming anyone and maintain that the First Amendment protected their 2020 coverage, when they gave airtime to allies of then-President Donald Trump who falsely claimed that Smartmatic and another voting company manipulated the results. Fox News and Newsmax have seized on the Philippines bribery allegations ever since CNN reported last year on the original charges against Bautista and the Justice Department’s ongoing criminal probe. Lawyers for Fox News and Newsmax have argued that any criminal prosecution against top Smartmatic executives would significantly harm Smartmatic’s public reputation, making it much harder for the voting company to claim it was solely damaged by the controversial 2020 election coverage. Smartmatic’s foreign work, including past activities in Venezuela and the Philippines saga, has long been seen as a vulnerability that could weaken its defamation cases in the US. The Newsmax-Smartmatic trial is scheduled for next month in Delaware state court, unless there is an outside settlement. This story has been updated with additional developments. The president of voting machine company Smartmatic and two other executives were charged with bribing the head of the Philippines election commission in order to get business during the 2016 election, according to the U.S. Justice Department. Between 2015 and 2018, Smartmatic co-founder Roger Alejandro Pinate Martinez, 49, and Jorge Miguel Vasquez, 62, together with others, allegedly caused at least $1 million in bribes to be paid to Juan Andres Donato Bautista, 60, the former chairman of the Philippines' Commission on Elections (COMELEC), according to an indictment filed in the Southern District of Florida. The men allegedly overpaid contracts using a slush fund to conceal the bribes. The co-conspirators then allegedly laundered funds related to the bribery scheme through bank accounts located in Asia, Europe, and the United States, including in the Southern District of Florida, according to prosecutors. Pinate and Vasquez are each charged with one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and one substantive violation of the FCPA, the DOJ said. Bautista, Pinate, Vasquez, and Elie Moreno, 44, are each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and three counts of international laundering of monetary instruments. “Smartmatic has learned that two of our employees have been indicted for alleged violations of the FCPA in the Philippines almost 10 years ago,” the company said in a statement on X Friday. “Regardless of the veracity of the allegations and while our accused employees remain innocent until proven guilty, we have placed both employees on leaves of absence, effective immediately.” The company added, “No voter fraud has been alleged and Smartmatic is not indicted. Voters worldwide must be assured that the elections they participate in are conducted with the utmost integrity and transparency. These are the values that Smartmatic lives by.” US federal prosecutors have accused Smartmatic's president of bribing election authorities in the Philippines to keep and expand the election-technology company's footprint in the country. The Justice Department said in a Thursday press release that Roger Piñate, the president and a cofounder of Smartmatic, faked invoices and contracts in the late 2010s to help pay $1 million to Andres Bautista, the former head of the Philippine elections commission. Smartmatic became a household name in the aftermath of the 2020 US election, when allies of then-President Donald Trump falsely accused it — and its rival election-technology company Dominion Voting Systems — of rigging votes to benefit now-President Joe Biden. In reality, Smartmatic's technology was used in only one county during the 2020 election, Los Angeles. But the indictment can still help Fox News, Newsmax, and other defendants in Smartmatic's many defamation lawsuits. These defendants have argued that scandal — not claims about election rigging — caused Smartmatic to lose contracts. The indictment against Piñate has not yet been made public. The Justice Department's press release published Thursday detailing the charges did not allege that Smartmatic's technology was used to manipulate votes. The Justice Department says Piñate, along with another Smartmatic employee, laundered the funds by inflating the cost of each voting machine used in the 2016 Philippine election. Prosecutors say the bribery scheme spanned bank accounts in Asia, Europe, and Florida, where the case was brought. Prosecutors say that through the bribery of Bautista — a codefendant in the case — Smartmatic retained and expanded its election services in the 2016 election. According to CNN, Bautista awarded Smartmatic $199 million in contracts for the 2016 Philippine presidential election. In a statement, Smartmatic said the indicted employees were placed on a leave of absence and stressed that the Justice Department did not allege any voter fraud. “No voter fraud has been alleged and Smartmatic is not indicted,” the company said in a statement. “Voters worldwide must be assured that the elections they participate in are conducted with the utmost integrity and transparency. These are the values that Smartmatic lives by.” Following the 2020 election, Smartmatic and Dominion both launched civil defamation lawsuits against Trump allies and right-wing media organizations that pushed false claims about the companies. Smartmatic filed still pending lawsuits against Fox News, Newsmax, Trump's now-former lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, and others. Some of the lawsuits are being funded by Reid Hoffman, a LinkedIn cofounder and Democratic Party donor. Giuliani and Powell both pushed a false conspiracy theory that Smartmatic and Dominion were somehow in cahoots with each other to manipulate votes. In addition to suing them, Smartmatic sued media organizations that it said allowed those claims to go unchallenged.