More Information On Joel Gustavo; The Venezuelan Found At JKIA With IEBC Equipments

Since his detention on Thursday at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Joel Gustavo Rodrguez Garca, a worker for Smartmatic International B.V., the business hired by the IEBC to provide technology for the August 9th General Election, has been involved in a dispute with Kenyan police (JKIA).

Joel Gustavo, a citizen of Venezuela, was detained together with Camargo Castellanos Jose Gregorio and Salvador Javier Suarez for having election-related papers in their possession.

Gustavo has been the Global Services Senior Deployment Manager at Smartmatic since 2017, according to a background check.

He has worked for the technology company for more than 10 years, spending the first roughly five years as the Global Services Warehouse and Global Logistic Manager.

According to Gustavo’s professional profile on LinkedIn, he, among other things, “reviews, communicates, and monitors tasks of all relevant stakeholders involved with the Global Service team’s operations, including senior executive management and our clients, to ensure the status of each project is on track, and identifies any potential issues that could compromise the timeline, budget, and quality of these initiatives.”

“Also I contribute in creation and validation of technology and service deployment strategies for electoral projects at a global level in collaboration with the project and verticals management team with the aim of achieving timely deployments, mitigating risks and according to the proposed cost,” he adds on his LinkedIn profile.
Additionally, he claims that he is responsible for providing electoral services and solutions to the clients of the business throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, as well as the Asia-Pacific area.

He held the position of Supply Chain Manager at the Panama-based logistics firm Calox Panamea SA before joining Smartmatic.

Gustavo was later released after being detained by police at JKIA, but his and two other Venezuelans’ detention sparked criticism from various government officials, with the IEBC describing the incident as “unjustified intimidation, harassment, and extortion.”
The election board maintained that the polling materials had not been released as had been alleged and that Gustavo and the others had been released on conditions.

Later, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations rejected IEBC’s remarks, claiming that the purported OCS Anti-Terrorism Police Unit—before which the three Venezuelans were supposed to appear—did not exist.

According to the police, when Gustavo was taken into custody, his bag also contained rolls of election stickers that he said were gifts from his employer, along with a laptop, a monitor, and five flash drives, among other computer peripherals.

Salvador Javier Suarez carried eight rolls of election stickers while Gustavo carried nine rolls.

“A further search was conducted at their apartment wherein the detectives seized and confiscated one tablet and two flash disks. All the seized electronic devices were forwarded to ATPU Forensic laboratory for examination and analysis,” police said in a statement on Sunday.