u/Bahamut_Tamer

In June 2025, the internal watchdog inside the DICT (the Department of Information and Communications Technology) sent a memo to the Commission on Audit, the government’s official auditor, raising red flags about a senior official, Undersecretary David Almirol Jr., and the e-government office he runs. The memo attached three reports.

The first is small in peso terms but points to a bigger problem. The DICT’s online bidding platform adds a ₱47.50 “convenience fee” every time someone pays online, but that money does not show up anywhere in the department’s official financial records. There is also no clear legal basis for charging it, and the platform was never properly registered as a payment operator the way the law requires. On its own the fee is tiny, but money being collected from the public that cannot be traced is the kind of thing auditors take seriously.

The second report is about security. A string of cyberattacks hit government agencies, the telecoms regulator, the police, the transportation department, and a local government in Ilocos Norte. The report claims these attacks look similar to methods used by previously arrested hackers, some of whom are allegedly connected to Almirol’s former company, Multisys, and to another former DICT official, Jeffrey Dy.

The third report is where the real money is, and it is a lot. It says Almirol approved a series of large government tech contracts (the eGov app, the eLGU system, and the National Government Data Center) that went to companies tied to PLDT, in many cases without full open bidding. Some highlights of what the auditors flag:

- Over ₱426 million in contracts for “managed” and “consultancy” services that may have been mislabeled to avoid registering the results as government property.

- A data center where 100 server racks were leased but 97% sat unused, while the government pays ₱36 million every single month, roughly ₱432 million a year.

- Additional rack leases worth ₱120 million on top of that.

- Contracts in 2024 that appear to repeat what was already paid for in 2023, meaning the government may have paid twice for the same thing.

- Software built with public money whose source code was never handed over to the government, so taxpayers paid for systems they don’t fully own.

Independent reporting has since put the total universe of these PLDT-linked eGov contracts at more than ₱1.5 billion.

The bottom line: a ₱47.50 fee got the auditors’ attention, but the reports describe potential exposure in the hundreds of millions to over a billion pesos. The auditors are asking the Commission on Audit to launch full independent investigations and to refer the officials involved to the Ombudsman and other agencies to determine whether any laws were broken.

JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED!

credits to ame_sunflower__ for capturing this before the sauce got censored lol

LIFE IS SWELL chingoose as long as we accept God Jihyo in our lives

context: Sen. Estrada reading the articles of impeachment, posted in his fb

hays di na naman ako nakaaral kagabi dahil sa kakanood ng news na baka maging bar q. what a time to be a law student, indeed!

Post a pic of your mother in the comments!