Philippine government suspends top tech official for alleged misconduct

The Philippines government’s Ombudsman has suspended a senior Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) official over allegations he assigned government contracts to a company he founded and continued to hold a stake in.

The Ombudsman announced the suspension yesterday and named Undersecretary for E-Government David L. Almirol as the individual of concern, after considering “administrative complaints of Grave Misconduct, Conduct Prejudicial to the Best Interest of the Service and violation of … the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees.”

“In ordering the preventive suspension, the Ombudsman found strong evidence supporting the administrative charges against Almirol,” according to its announcement of the suspension.

Almirol founded a company called Multisys Technologies Corporation that offers software development services, plus packaged products. After over a decade as the company’s CEO, Almirol in 2022 joined DICT at the request of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., to work on improving e-government services.

The Ombudsman alleged that between 2023 and 2025 DICT awarded at least eight contracts valued at over ₱1.5 billion ($24 million) to entities linked with Multisys. The contracts covered information and communications technology consultancy, e-government application deployment, web-based messaging services, cloud infrastructure, data center colocation and software subscriptions. Evidence of those transactions is apparently on the record in Multisys’s books.

Local laws mean Almirol should have divested his stake in Multisys within 60 days. The Ombudsman alleges the exec missed that deadline but later complied. It’s not alleged he issued contracts in the period during which he continued to hold Multisys shares.

The Ombudsman has suspended Almirol without pay for six months, a step it says is necessary because if he continued in the role it “could prejudice the investigation, particularly given his control and custody of documents and evidence relevant to the case.”

The org has also pointed out that its decision does not pre-judge the matter, but is “a precautionary measure intended to preserve the integrity of the proceedings and ensure an impartial and unimpeded investigation.”

President Marcos Jr. made rooting out corruption a key plank of his platform and even created an agency to tackle the problem. However, it’s felt that some anti-corruption actions may have been partly politically motivated.

Past tech-related scandals in the Philippines include a 2022 case that saw its Department of Education overpay for lousy laptops. ®