The Office of the Ombudsman has filed charges before the Sandiganbayan against six former Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Region 12 officials and seven private individuals over an alleged right-of-way scheme in General Santos City. The case concerns payments made years ago, for land the government had already taken decades earlier. Its timeline is itself a measure of how slowly accountability can move.
The charges
The charges comprise 18 counts of malversation through falsification of public documents and 18 counts of graft. The officials charged are former regional director Subair Saro Diron, former assistant regional director Laureano Suan Jr., Tomas Rodriguez, David Padlan, Paisal Padate and Ansare Busran. In an October 25 statement, the Ombudsman said it found prima facie evidence against them. Separately, it dismissed Busran, a former regional legal officer, from service.
According to the Ombudsman, about P491.9 million was paid for 18 land parcels supposedly affected by the Digos-Makar National Road in Barangay Lagao. Investigators allege that claimants submitted falsified documents and that a 2009 appraisal value was improperly applied to land the government took in the early 1990s, inflating compensation.
The case draws on National Bureau of Investigation reports and a 2017 whistleblower affidavit.
How the alleged scheme would work
Right-of-way payments compensate owners whose land is taken for public roads. The mechanism alleged here is simple. If land acquired in the early 1990s is valued at 2009 prices, the payment reflects nearly two decades of land-value growth the claimant would not be entitled to. If the claimant’s papers are also falsified, the payment may go to someone with no valid claim at all. Both allegations remain to be proven in court.
A decade-old trail
The case did not appear from nowhere. In 2017, then Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II publicly alleged a far larger right-of-way scam in Region 12, which he put at P8.7 billion. A DPWH lawyer later disputed the scale, saying only about P2.8 billion had been released for General Santos right-of-way payments.
In March 2018, the NBI filed plunder and graft complaints against former Public Works Secretary Rogelio Singson and 33 others over P255.5 million in nine payment vouchers from 2011 to 2015, GMA News reported. Diron, Suan, Rodriguez and Padlan, four of the six officials charged now, were among the respondents in that 2018 complaint, according to the Inquirer. Singson denied profiting from any transaction. In February 2019, the Senate Blue Ribbon committee adopted a report on the P255.5 million. A House committee the same year recommended charges against Diron, Suan and others.
DPWH also changed its rules. A 2017 department order required judicial determination before right-of-way payments in Region 12 could proceed, a recognition that the administrative process had been vulnerable.
The new case grows out of the same trail. According to GMA News, the Ombudsman built it on three NBI reports submitted in 2018 and 2019 and on the 2017 affidavit of witness Roberto Catapang Jr. What the Ombudsman has not said is whether the 18 Lagao parcels are among the transactions in the 2018 P255.5-million complaint, or what became of that complaint against Singson and the other respondents. Facts PH could not find a public answer to either question.
Two of the accused have already been convicted in a related, smaller case. On March 26, 2026, the Sandiganbayan’s Fourth Division found Rodriguez and Padlan guilty of graft and falsification over P5.35 million in fraudulent right-of-way payments in the region. Each count of graft carries six to ten years in prison, and both were permanently barred from public office, Rappler reported. The new case involves an amount more than 90 times larger. A conviction in one case does not establish guilt in another.
The accountability questions
Nine years separate the 2017 whistleblower affidavit from these charges. The delay matters. Witnesses’ memories fade, documents go missing and accused officials retire. It also matters for recovery: the longer a case takes, the harder it is to trace and return money.
Several questions follow:
- Will the government seek to recover the P491.9 million, and has any of it been frozen?
- What happened to the 2018 plunder complaint against Singson and others?
- Who were the seven private claimants, and did they act alone or with brokers?
- Has the 2017 rule on judicial determination stopped similar payments since?
What happens next
The Sandiganbayan will decide whether to issue arrest warrants and set arraignment. The accused are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Facts PH found no public response from any of the accused or their lawyers in the October 25–26 coverage reviewed. Rappler’s account of the Ombudsman statement confirms the count: two former officials and four other DPWH personnel, plus seven private individuals.
