Roger Piñate, a Venezuelan citizen and president and co-founder of Smartmatic, a voting machine vendor founded in Boca Raton, Florida, was charged with two other current and former Smartmatic executives — Jorge Vasquez, a U.S. citizen and the company’s former vice president of hardware development, as well as Elie Moreno, a Venezuelan-Israeli who oversaw Smartmatic’s Philippine contracts. Six months before the recall vote, despite having no experience or expertise in voting machines, the National Electoral Council awarded a $91 million contract to Smartmatic and Bizta, another firm owned by Mugica and his father, to develop touchscreen voting machines to replace the country’s existing optical-scan machines before the referendum vote.