[Inside the Newsroom] The DICT circus, Almirol's suspension, and our tech coverage refocus
Source: Rappler
Published on: 2026-11-01 10:00
On October 21, the Office of the Ombudsman ordered a six-month preventive suspension without pay against Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Undersecretary David Almirol Jr. It cited findings of conflict of interest: the eGov project, which Almirol led, awarded contracts worth P1.55 billion to a company that eventually subcontracted work to Multisys Technologies Corporation, a company he founded. The suspension order came almost a year after Rappler exposed the issue in an investigative report published in December 2025. The report was triggered by a DICT internal audit report that Rappler got hold of. To get to the bottom of the issue, we spent months scouring through corporate information and financial disclosures submitted by Multisys to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as well as DICT procurement records. We interviewed numerous sources, incl...
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