Ex-Clé, key witness to fraud in Venezuela's 2024 elections
Transparencia Venezuela reveals how Argentine company Ex-Clé controlled the entire electoral infrastructure on 28 July 2024 and never responded to verification requests.
Ex-Clé: total control over Venezuela's electoral system in July 2024
A new report from Transparencia Venezuela concludes that Argentine company Ex-Clé S.A. — and its Venezuelan subsidiary Ex-Clé Soluciones Biométricas C.A. — operated as a central actor in the electoral system during the presidential elections of 28 July 2024, accumulating decisive power over voter authentication, transmission of results and vote tallying.
According to transparenciave.org, that position makes Ex-Clé the only entity capable of verifying or refuting the official results proclaimed by the National Electoral Council (CNE), which declared Nicolás Maduro the winner. The company never responded to requests from electoral observation organisations or Venezuelan civil groups seeking access to documents or consolidated records, nor did it issue statements or participate in press conferences.
From biometric provider to sole operator
Ex-Clé consolidated its role over two decades of commercial relations with key figures in the Venezuelan government. The turning point came in 2017, when company Smartmatic publicly denounced manipulation of turnout in the Constitutional National Assembly election. Smartmatic subsequently filed a lawsuit with the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) against the Venezuelan State and against Ex-Clé, accusing illegal appropriation of assets, theft of technology and coercion.
With Smartmatic out of the market, Ex-Clé became Venezuela's sole electoral technology operator.
The 2020 fire and OFAC sanctions
In March 2020, a fire in a CNE warehouse in Miranda state destroyed 49,508 voting machines — 98.5% of the equipment stock — and 49,323 biometric authentication systems. The report flags this event as part of the timeline explaining how Ex-Clé consolidated its dominant position.
That same year, the United States Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Ex-Clé and its owners, Guillermo Carlos San Agustín and Marcos Javier Machado Requena, for providing material support to the Maduro government in the organisation of elections deemed fraudulent.
Silence amid allegations of hacking and incomplete audits
Venezuelan civil organisations and electoral observation groups directed their requests especially to the parent company's headquarters in Argentina, where they asked the company to clarify allegations of alleged hacking, report on audits that were not conducted and facilitate access to consolidated records. Ex-Clé did not respond in any case.
The Transparencia Venezuela report includes a detailed timeline of Ex-Clé's transformation from a provider of biometric services for various state bodies into the sole operator of the country's electoral technology infrastructure. The organisation concludes that this position gives the company the information necessary to confirm or deny the official results of 28 July 2024.
Source: Google News VE — Crime