MANILA, Philippines – Davao City businessman Dennis Uy denied allegations that he invested in Smartmatic and its local partner Total Information Management Corporation (TIM).

Various social media posts accused Uy of investing in the two companies to allegedly manipulate the outcome of the 2019 elections.

Smartmatic-TIM is the joint venture which provided the vote-counting machines (VCMs) used in the automated polls.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, May 14, artist Lia Torralba quoted a supposed “IT expert” as saying that Uy “scrambled to buy” TIM in late 2018. Election cheating was insinuated in the post, which said that “the Comelec (Commission on Elections) servers are housed in one of TIM’s data centers.”

“There is absolutely no truth to the allegations that the Udenna Group or its chairman, Mr Dennis Uy, purchased a local IT company called TIM,” said Adel Tamano, spokesman for Uy’s Udenna Corporation, on Thursday, May 16.

Tamano said Uy is taking the allegations “very seriously.”

“[W]e have instructed our security and legal teams to investigate this matter, specifically on who are the persons making these ridiculous claims. We are considering filing civil and/or criminal cases, if necessary, to protect the reputation of Mr Dennis Uy and the Udenna Group,” he added.

TIM is a Filipino-owned technology solutions company based in Makati City, according to its company website.

Meanwhile, Smartmatic is a Venezuelan-owned firm which has experience in bringing VCMs to other countries.

Uy is known to be an ally of President Rodrigo Duterte, having contributed P30 million to his campaign in 2016. (READ: How to grow a business, according to Dennis Uy) – Rappler.com