The U.S. government launched a federal probe of Smartmatic, the Venezuelan voting machine company affiliated with the Venezuelan government, whose machines were instrumental in all the electoral fraud committed in Venezuela since 2004. The company claims the probe, first broke by the Miami Herald on Saturday, was all their idea but ahead of U.S. elections, under unfavorable media spotlight, I do not believe them at all.

Following its role in the recall referendum that entrenched Hugo Chavez in power, the company has since taken its kooka-profits (in the neighborhood of $120 million) from the crime against democracy, and bought up a U.S. voting machine company, called Sequoia. Those machines have contributed to slow, error-fraught elections in Chicago, earning them municipal scrutiny, and questions have arisen as to who really owns the company, which has relatives of current Venezuelan ambassador, Bernardo Alvarez, on its board.

The whole thing looks shady, by the way. It’s ownership structure is a series of shell companies through the Caribbean and Europe. On the record, the company says there is nothing unusual about this, and they only do it to avoid paying Venezuelan taxes, something that must endear them with the Chavista regime, which continually rails about capital flight and tax avoidance. /s

For awhile, the company had a Chavista board member on its board – it claims that was just archaic Venezuelan law and they never met the guy anyway, something that is hard to believe.

The gears of the federal government turn slowly but they do turn. Ever since Alek Boyd exposed the first signs of gamy ownership structure of this firm, its efforts to extend its tentacles to the U.S. and the avalanche of fraud in Venezuela that was exposed by bloggers like Miguel Octavio and Daniel Duquenal and Bruni at Cuentos Intranscedentes, we in the U.S. have realized that democracy in peril is no longer just Venezuela’s problem, it is the U.S.’s problem, too! Both our countries are having their very democracies, and free, fair elections are the bedrock of them, threatened by the same dictator, Venezuela’s brutal Hugo Chavez.

At this point, our fates are intertwined now, we have a common enemy who seeks to take us both over. That’s why Alek Boyd’s work is so heroic. Read his latest work on this new development, here.

If you are new to the Smartmatic issue, check out Gustavo Coronel’s excellent primer for beginners in this post here.

Venezuela Today also has much more here.