While the real owners of Sequoia Voting Systems remain hidden, one thing is very clear – this privately-owned foreign company, staffed by Venezuelans and former Unisys executives, will control decisive vote tallies during the next presidential election.

COOK COUNTY, Illinois – Sequoia Voting Systems took a giant leap forward in June 2005, when the election authorities of Chicago and Cook County approved voting system contracts worth nearly $52 million allowing the small privately-owned foreign company to run elections in the second largest county in the United States.

Cook County has a population of some 5.5 million people and is second only to Los Angeles County in terms of population. The sudden and unexpected switch to Sequoia voting machines in the Chicago-area greatly increased the king-making power of the mysterious little company from Caracas, Venezuela, or wherever it's from.

Cook County is the only county in Illinois to use Sequoia voting machines, but the votes from Cook County largely determine the state's votes in the Electoral College.

Sequoia has existing contracts to run elections in the entire state of Nevada, and three of the largest counties in both California and Florida. It also tallies the votes in key counties in Colorado, New Jersey, Michigan and Maryland.

With the responsibility to run the elections and count the votes for some 40 million U.S. voters, as the company says, one would think that the mainstream media would be interested in revealing who really owns the privately-held company, but that is obviously not the case. The media is seemingly blind to the crucial question of ownership of Sequoia Voting Systems, an issue which is not even discussed by the leading Chicago news organizations, including The Chicago Tribune, a national media giant.

Sequoia, which was "combined" or merged with Smartmatic, a Venezuelan shell company in March 2005, provided the computer voting machine system that was responsible for Chicago's seriously flawed and chaotic primary election on March 21.

The Chicago and Cook County contracts with Sequoia are worth more than 3.7 times the total price Smartmatic paid for the voting machine company, which was formerly owned by De La Rue, a British company that produces currency notes and cash systems.

The Sequoia voting machines replaced Election Systems & Software machines that the city and county had only purchased in 2000.

Chicago and Cook County have threatened to withhold payment to Sequoia after serious problems plagued the voting and vote counting in the recent primary. Members of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners were warned by their lawyer not to talk about Sequoia-Smartmatic. "Serious repercussions" could result from comments they might make about the company or its role in the recent voting fiasco.

Although The Miami Herald, the leading U.S. newspaper on Latin American issues, alleges that Sequoia is a Venezuelan-owned company, American Free Press has been unable to confirm who actually controls the private company that says it counts the votes for 40 million Americans in 20 states.

After researching the question of ownership of Sequoia, a mystery wrapped in an enigma, a number of indicators suggest that it is not a Venezuelan-owned company at all. Rather than being owned by a couple young computer engineers from Venezuela, namely Antonio Mugica and Alfredo Anzola, evidence suggests that Smartmatic is a carefully-crafted "Venezuelan cut-out" designed to hide the company's true owners.

"Somehow Smartmatic International [Sequoia's parent company] and its Venezuelan owners were able to purchase Sequoia last year without the deal receiving any scrutiny from federal regulators – including the Treasury Department's Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS), which is tasked with determining whether foreign takeovers pose security risks," Richard Brand wrote in the Miami paper on March 27.

The outstanding questions about the company's actual ownership only became apparent at the end of the Brand article: "In fact, Smartmatic International is owned by a Netherlands corporation, which is in turn owned by a Curacao corporation, which is in turn held by a number of Curacao trusts controlled by proxy holders who represent unnamed investors, almost certainly among them Venezuelans [Antonio] Mugica and [Alfredo] Anzola and possibly others," Brand wrote.

If Mugica and Anzola are, in fact, the primary owners of Sequoia-Smartmatic, why have they gone to such lengths to hide the real ownership of the company? Who are the real controlling owners who remain hidden by this corporate shell game?

Brand was not available to respond to AFP's questions about his claims regarding the ownership of Sequoia.

Key executives of Sequoia-Smartmatic refuse to answer this question and direct all inquiries to the company's vice president for communications and external affairs, Michelle M. Shafer, who provided this vague written response on March 29:

"Prior to its combination with Smartmatic in 2005, Sequoia was owned by a British company, which had purchased it from another European company. Today Sequoia Voting Systems is owned by Smartmatic Corporation, a U.S. company.

"Smartmatic Corporation is owned by a Dutch holding company, which also owns all of the other companies in which Smartmatic currently conducts business," Shafer wrote.

De La Rue sold Sequoia to Smartmatic in March 2005 for less than half the $35 million it had paid for 85 percent of the company in 2002. The odd sale of Sequoia by Del La Rue coincided with the appointment of the British diplomat Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's former U.N. Ambassador and Special Representative for Iraq, to the board of De La Rue.

Greenstock is a special advisor to BP plc, the oil giant formerly known as British Petroleum. BP has considerable assets in Venezuela.

While De La Rue owned Sequoia, which was unusual because it did not fit with De La Rue's core competencies, it was run by Tracey Graham, a senior De La Rue executive who remained at Sequoia until September 8, 2005. Graham has since returned to Britain where she sits on the currency company's operating board.

"Smartmatic is privately held," Shafer, a former executive with a Texas-based computer voting company, said. "A controlling interest is held by its founder and CEO, Antonio Mugica, who holds dual Spanish and Venezuelan citizenship."

However, as Smartmatic's Uniform Business Report for the Florida Dept. of State, dated Jan. 27, 2003, reveals, three men named "Antonio Mugica" sit on the board of the company.

Antonio Mugica is the president; Antonio Mugica Rivero is chairman of the board, and Antonio Mugica Sesma, company director and father of the president, is reportedly the owner of the house on Dinner Key Drive in Boca Raton where the company was based.

This raises a number of questions. How has a little family-run company of three relatives and two friends, all Venezuelans, based in a house in Boca Raton in 2003, been able to take control of the counting of the votes for 40 million Americans?

And why has the mainstream media ignored the important questions of ownership that surround Sequoia Voting Systems and the other private companies that count our votes?

How was this tiny backroom company able to attract four senior executives from the U.S. computer giant Unisys to fill the positions of president, two vice presidents, and corporate controller?

UNISYS - THE MOSSAD'S TROJAN HORSE?

Unisys is headed by Lawrence A. Weinbach, who is president, chief executive officer and chairman of the computer giant who provides computer equipment and software for all of the key agencies of the U.S. government and leading companies.

Under Weinbach, Unisys has integrated Israeli security software, provided by the Israel-based Check Point Software Technologies and Eurekify, into its own software. Israeli software, written by Mossad-linked companies, now "secures" the most sensitive computers in the U.S. government and commercial sector.

"Unisys combines Check Point's security technologies within Unisys solutions across strategic vertical markets including the commercial and federal sectors," Unisys says on its website. "100 percent of the Fortune 100 rely on Check Point for unequalled security and worry-free protection," it says.

On October 4, 2004, Jack A. Blaine, a 15-year veteran and executive vice president of Unisys, became president of Smartmatic, and has since become president of Sequoia. Oddly, Unisys did not issue a press release when its number two executive left the company for a Venezuelan start-up company headed by two 30-year old friends from Caracas.

While working with Unisys, Blaine, 59, earned well over $670,000 per year as executive vice president. Why would one of the highest executives from Unisys take a position with a dodgy Venezuelan start-up company based in a private home in Boca Raton, Florida?

Calls to Blaine asking why he had left Unisys for a small Venezuelan-owned start-up company have gone unanswered.

Three other executives also left Unisys to join Blaine at new positions with Smartmatic: Robert Cook, Vice President of the Elections Business Unit, Edgar Zorrilla, Vice President of the Business Development, and Kevin Hurst, Corporate Controller.

Maria, a Venezuelan receptionist at Smartmatic's office in Boca Raton said that the company's executives are "never" there. "They are always traveling," she said. Asked how many people actually work at the company's U.S. headquarters, Maria said "between 10 and 20."

Asked about the company's ownership, Maria said the owners were not Venezuelan but she would not say anything more about who they are.

Finis

Photo: Antonio Mugica, the 32-year-old Venezuelan and Spanish citizen (seemingly of Basque origin), who founded Smartmatic with his childhood friend Alfredo Anzola, and who now sits in Caracas as the chief executive officer of Smartmatic and Sequoia Voting Systems.

Alfredo Anzola and Mugica both seem to have relatives in show business. An Alfredo Anzola, perhaps his father, is a famous Venezuelan film director and there are a number of Mugicas who produce and act in films.

I don't think that these two young men from Caracas are really the ones in charge of the companies they represent. If that were the case, why would they go through such elaborate and complex shell companies to conceal that they are the owners?

No, there is clearly a devious hidden hand at work with Sequoia-Smartmatic and the fact that the company hired 4 senior executives from Unisys suggests that Larry Weinbach's computer firm is a key player in this "Venezuelan cut-out" laid out by the former British owners of Sequoia, De La Rue PLC.

The Mossad-written Check Point security software (aptly enough named), has been integrated since 1997 into Unisys software and computer systems and is clearly providing Israeli military intelligence with Trojan Horse infiltration of the most sensitive U.S. government and commercial computer systems.

The Israeli penetration of U.S. government computer networks through the Larry Weinbach and the Unisys Trojan Horse makes the similar Israeli penetration through Ptech during the 9-11 terror operation seem small. One can only conclude that Israeli intelligence is privy to all the information on U.S. government and commercial computers and has been since about 1998.

Israeli military intelligence is inside the mind and nervous system of the ENTIRE U.S. government as well as all of the Fortune 100 companies.

What was that that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said to Shimon Peres about Jewish control in America shortly after 9-11?

"Don't worry about American pressure," Sharon said during a weekly meeting of the Israeli cabinet, "We the Jewish people control America."

UNISYS - The Mossad's Trojan Horse into U.S. Computers