The contract for a new building for the Commission on Audit’s (COA) headquarters was awarded to a contractor with ties to the wife of one of its own commissioners already linked to anomalous public works projects, according to a watchdog group.
Records reviewed by the Right to Know, Right Now (R2KRN) coalition showed that the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) awarded in 2021 a P959 million contract for the new COA building, with a basement, in its central office in Quezon City, to the joint venture of R.U. Aquino Construction and Development Corp. and Le Bron Construction.
Le Bron Construction, a sole proprietorship, is the main joint venture partner of Olympus Mining and Builders Group Phils. Corp., a construction company headed by Marilou Laurio Lipana, wife of incumbent COA Commissioner Mario Lipana. A review of Olympus’s DPWH contracts from 2023 to 2025 showed that it entered into joint ventures with Le Bron in nine out of its 22 contracts during that period.
Le Bron’s authorized managing officer is a certain Moises Nicdao, who is also among the incorporators of Iron Ore, Gold and Vanadium Resources Inc. where Mrs. Lipana is listed as president. Although Commissioner Lipana was not yet part of the commission when the project was awarded, R2KRN noted that he was already a senior COA officer then. His official profile indicated that he had served as the supervising auditor of COA for Manila.
The Inquirer called Commissioner Lipana’s office for comment but was told by his staff that he was still on medical leave.
The 1987 Constitution bars members of constitutional commissions from having any financial interest, direct or indirect, in businesses that may be affected by their office’s functions.
Republic Act No. 6713, the Code of Conduct for Public Officials, extends this prohibition to spouses and close relatives.
Even if Commissioner Lipana had no role in auditing DPWH projects involving his wife’s company, R2KRN argued that it ‘still stands that the new headquarters of the nation’s audit institution was awarded to a contractor that had a business association with the family of one of its senior officials.’
‘This betrays the deeper institutional entanglements that now confront COA,’ read the report written by Nepomuceno Malaluan, Malou Mangahas, and Jenina Joy Chavez.
‘Indeed, while a new home for the country’s supreme audit institution was being built, the very foundations of its independence were being eaten away like wood by termites from within,’ the report said.
The Le Bron-Olympus partnership extended far beyond the COA compound, the coalition added.
From 2016 to 2025, Olympus bagged P1.89 billion worth of infrastructure projects from DPWH-mostly flood-control structures and access roads in Bulacan-including nine joint ventures with Le Bron Construction.
Many of these projects fell under Bulacan’s first district engineering office, whose former officials Henry Alcantara and Brice Ericson Hernandez had admitted before the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee to kickbacks, bid rigging and ghost projects.
In his sworn statement to the Senate on September 23, 2025, Alcantara claimed Commissioner Lipana personally requested a list of flood-control projects for Bulacan and later managed to insert P500 million worth of them into the 2023 Unprogrammed Appropriations, followed by P400 million in 2024 and another P500 million in 2025.
DPWH Undersecretary Roberto Bernardo confirmed in an affidavit that the commissioner had sought introductions to Bulacan DPWH officials.
The Office of the Ombudsman earlier confirmed that it was now conducting a fact-finding investigation into Lipana since these allegations surfaced.
Sen. Francis Pangilinan said this could constitute an impeachable offense for Lipana, who was appointed by former President Rodrigo Duterte in 2022 and whose term is set to expire in 2027. /apl