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Ghio Ong - The Philippine Star
April 10, 2026 | 12:00am
This file photo shows the Court of Appeals in Manila.
STAR / File
MANILA, Philippines — The Court of Appeals (CA) affirmed the ombudsman’s administrative charges filed against four disgraced officials of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) involved in irregularities that came with the purchase of COVID-19 RT-PCR test kits from Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp.
The appellate court’s 15th Division ruled in favor of the Office of the Ombudsman’s findings that former DBM undersecretary and Procurement Service acting chief Lloyd Christopher Lao and former director Warren Rex Liong were liable for grave misconduct, gross neglect of duty, serious dishonesty, and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of service. Also, former PS-DBM director Christine Marie Suntay and former division chief Augusto Ylagan were charged for gross neglect of duty and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service.
In its 49-page verdict promulgated last March 31 and available on the CA website, the four former PS-DBM officials gave “undue and unwarranted advantage” to Pharmally – financed by Michael Yang, the economic adviser of detained former president Rodrigo Duterte – by awarding contracts for supply of RT-PCR test kits worth billions of pesos despite having a paid-up capital of P625,000.
The records, as appreciated by the ombudsman, showed Lao permitted the award of contracts worth billions of pesos to an entity grossly incapable of undertaking them.
“In allowing Pharmally to remain in the procurement process and ultimately benefit from it, Lao displayed a manifest disregard of the rules governing the procurement and, correspondingly, extended to Pharmally an undue and unwarranted advantage,” read a portion of the ruling penned by CA Associate Justice Marietta Brawner-Cualing that discussed Lao’s liability.
The charges against Liong, Ylagan and Suntay were found with basis, being all able to approve and proceed with Pharmally’s contract despite its insufficiencies, including failure to comply with government specifications for RT-PCR test kits.
Meanwhile, the CA also reversed the ombudsman’s ruling against former PS-DBM division chief Webster Laureñana for grave misconduct, gross neglect of duty, serious dishonesty and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service, saying “the records do not yield substantial evidence sufficient to hold that Laureñana committed acts amounting to” the charges.
The same decision also declared that six personnel of the Research Institute of Tropical Medicine included in the charges against the PS-DBM officials could no longer claim back wages following their preventive suspension, despite the ombudsman dismissing the complaints against them.
