Commission on Elections (Comelec) Commissioner Rey Bulay bared on Friday, April 22, that no information that will affect the upcoming May 2022 polls was accessed in the alleged Smartmatic data breach.
During a press briefing, Bulay said that this was according to the report of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and the poll body's technology provider for the automated election system (AES) Smartmatic.
"Puro intramural documents ng Smartmatic ang nakuha (Only intramural documents of Smartmatic were obtained)," he stated.
The NBI, according to Bulay, even conducted search operations on the other gadgets of Smartmatic's former employee Ricardo Argana.
"Para tingnan kung meron pang ibang storage o kung nadownload e talagang data ng Comelec.. So napatunayan po na wala (To see if there are other storages or if what was downloaded was actually Comelec data. So it was proven that it was not)," he said.
The Comelec on Tuesday, appeared before the Senate Committee on Electoral Reforms and People's Participation chaired by Senator Imee Marcos. Bulay said that the poll body was able to get past the strict committee.
However, the Comelec also told the Senate committee that it has decided to withhold a P90-million payment for the services to Smartmatic.
Chairman Saidamen Pangarungan said that Comelec would also wait for the findings of the NBI probe before deciding on the actions regarding its contract with Smartmatic, including possible sanctions against the firm for any contract violations.