Andy Bautista's Comelec docs requested by US —Garcia

The United States government has requested the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to provide documents for the case against former poll body chief Andy Bautista who is reportedly facing money-laundering and bribery charges in America.

“The US government had coordinated and sought the assistance of the Comelec. In fact, they asked us for some documents and they even asked us to interview certain people from the commission and we fully assisted, we fully participated," said Comelec Chairman George Garcia in an ANC interview Wednesday.

"We gave everything that they are asking us because we want to be transparent as [much] as possible and this is in order for us to seek the truth,” added Garcia.

Although the US government requested for several testimonies and documents, Garcia said they were not informed about the background of the complaint against the former Comelec chairman.

Garcia then appealed to the US government to provide information on the cases supposedly filed against Bautista so the Comelec will “not be in the dark.”

“I would like to ask the US government to share information or to share information or to share documents in the same manner that when they asked us for certain documents we provided," asked Garcia.

"Sana po ma-i-provide din sa amin para malaman natin what’s the real reason for the indictment, ‘yung puno’t dulo po para hindi naman in the dark ang commission,” he added.

(We hope we can be provided with the information also about the indictment so COMELEC will not be "in the dark.")

Last Monday, Garcia revealed that he created a fact-finding task force to review all contracts and find relevant information related to the procurement of automated election system (AES) machines in 2016.

According to a 24 Oras weekend report, former Comelec Chairman Andy Baustista is facing money laundering complaints in the United States over the attempted transfer of $4 million from four executives of Smartmatic subsidiaries.

He is also said to be facing bribery charges filed by a unit of the US Department of Homeland Security for accepting money from an unnamed poll company.

Bautista has denied the allegations on X, formerly Twitter. He said he was ready to respond to the alleged charges at the proper forum and time.

Smartmatic, however, said it did not use illegal means to win the project and that it doesn't have anything to do with Bautista's case, the weekend report of "24 Oras" said.

Smartmatic was the supplier of the vote counting machines in 2016 when Bautista served as chairperson of the poll body. —VAL, GMA Integrated News