NBI raids Smartmatic employee’s house

MANILA, Philippines — The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) raided on Sunday the house of a Smartmatic employee who allegedly stole a laptop of the country’s automated elections service provider and is a suspect in the company’s security breach.

NBI spokesperson Ferdinand Lavin yesterday confirmed to The STAR that the NBI conducted an operation on the house of Ricardo Argana in San Pedro, Laguna “in connection with the Smartmatic investigations.”

The NBI cybercrime division had obtained a  warrant to search Argana’s house.

Argana was “allowed to navigate in a controlled environment” the automated voting machines due to his job to “determine possible glitches,” NBI cybercrime division chief Vic Lorenzo said in a GMA News report.

The NBI will examine a cell phone, SD cards, and wireless router recovered from the suspect’s room.

The Smartmatic laptop was also recovered but was encrypted, preventing the NBI from doing a forensic examination, according to the report.

Argana, who remains at large, will be charged with illegal access and assessed if he is qualified to become a state witness, Lorenzo said.

“The NBI cybercrime division will review all available digital evidence to verify and ferret out the truth,” NBI officer-in-charge director Eric Distor said in Filipino.

The raid was conducted as the NBI wraps up its probe on the alleged hacking and data breach of the country’s automatic elections service provider.

A Senate joint congressional investigation into the incident revealed that a disgruntled Smartmatic employee leaked the company’s day-to-day, non-sensitive and internal operational materials to a hackers’ group to blackmail Smartmatic.

Smartmatic has maintained that the source code and automated elections system software underwent rigorous review by the Commission on Elections, which denied that its elections system was hacked, but is looking into filing charges against Smartmatic over the data breach involving its employee.

Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra assured that the NBI probe will not be politicized.

Sen. Imee Marcos, sister of presidential contender Ferdinand Marcos Jr., chairs the Senate electoral reforms committee that investigated the data breach.

She and Senators Ping Lacson and Tito Sotto, presidential and vice presidential candidates, who are also part of the panel, rejected calls to recuse themselves from the investigation due to conflict of interest.