The official in charge of the government's eGovPH super app has been ordered out of his post for six months, without pay, over roughly ₱1.55 billion in government contracts tied to the software company he founded. The Office of the Ombudsman released the preventive suspension order against Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Undersecretary for E-Government David Almirol Jr. on October 21, Newsbytes.PH reported.
Almirol built his name as the founder of Multisys Technologies Corp., the software firm he led as president and CEO for more than a decade, before joining the DICT in August 2022. He went on to lead the development and rollout of eGovPH, the government's all-in-one services app. The Ombudsman now says contracts connected to his old company are reason enough to keep him away from his office while investigators work.
What the seven-page order says
The order places Almirol under preventive suspension while the Ombudsman investigates administrative complaints for grave misconduct, conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service, and violations of Republic Act 6713, the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees, The Manila Times reported.
The suspension takes effect immediately and stays in place while the administrative case is heard. The Ombudsman said Almirol's continued presence in office could prejudice the investigation, because he controls or has custody of documents and evidence relevant to the case.
The order is explicit about what it is not. "Preventive suspension is not a penalty or a finding of administrative liability," it says — it is a precaution to protect the integrity of the probe, not a judgment that Almirol did anything wrong.
DICT Secretary Robert Joseph de Claro was furnished a copy of the order, directed to implement it, and told to submit proof of compliance to the Ombudsman.
Eight contracts, ₱1.55 billion, 18 months
The case traces back to a June 2025 report by the DICT's own Internal Audit Unit, which flagged the hiring of former Multisys personnel and the award of contracts to companies connected to the firm.
According to the order, the DICT awarded at least eight e-government-related contracts worth about ₱1.55 billion between November 2023 and May 2025 to companies with financial relationships with Multisys. The contracts covered ICT consultancy, e-government application deployment, web-based messaging services, cloud infrastructure, data center colocation, and software subscriptions, NewsWatch Plus reported.
Multisys's own audited financial statements put numbers on those relationships: the related companies paid it ₱110.8 million in 2023 and ₱514.6 million in 2024 for managed services — about ₱625.4 million over the two years, per the Daily Tribune's report on the order.
The 60-day divestment rule
A second strand of the case is about timing. Section 9 of RA 6713 requires a public official to divest, or give up, business interests that may conflict with their office within 60 days of taking it.
Almirol founded Multisys in 2010. He was appointed DICT undersecretary in August 2022. Yet a Multisys general information sheet notarized on October 27, 2022 — and received by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on November 2 — still listed him as holding a 49.21% stake in the company. He was removed from the stockholder list only in a later filing notarized on November 18, 2022. The Ombudsman said that fell outside the 60-day divestment window.
No word yet from Almirol
None of the October 21 and 22 reports on the order carried a statement from Almirol, and the DICT had not announced who would take over the e-government portfolio in his absence. The administrative complaints themselves have yet to be decided, and the order itself stresses that the suspension is not a finding of liability.
What this means if you use eGovPH
Nothing changes inside the app today. None of the reports describe any disruption to eGovPH services — the suspension covers the official, not the platform, which recently added the Gemini-powered Kuya AI assistant for its tens of millions of registered users.
The bigger question is who steers the e-government program, and under how much scrutiny. The suspension lands on an agency already in churn: Secretary de Claro took over the DICT only on October 13 after Henry Aguda's resignation, and the Ombudsman is separately running a "ghost internet" probe into the DICT's free Wi-Fi contracts. Two Ombudsman actions on DICT spending in the space of weeks suggest the agency's procurement — from free Wi-Fi sites to cloud and data-center deals — will be picked over line by line.
What to watch next: whether the DICT names an officer-in-charge for e-government, whether Almirol contests the order, and what the Ombudsman's main administrative case finds about the eight contracts.
