The Sandiganbayan’s Seventh Division dismissed three graft cases against former Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama and five other officials, citing the prosecution's failure to specify actual criminal acts in their filings.
The court ruled that the charges, which involved P45 million in emergency waste management contracts from December 2021, lacked necessary factual details and violated the constitutional rights of the accused.
Following the dismissal, the court lifted travel restrictions for all six individuals and ordered the immediate release of their posted bail bonds after rejecting the prosecution's motion for reconsideration.
THE Sandiganbayan has completely dismissed three graft cases against former Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama and five other former city officials. The anti-graft court ruled that prosecutors failed to specify the actual acts that allegedly made the officials criminally liable.
In a 24-page resolution issued on July 16, 2026, the Sandiganbayan’s Seventh Division also lifted travel restrictions against all six accused and ordered the immediate release of the bail bonds they had posted.
The dismissals began on June 2, when the court threw out charges against former city administrator Leizl Calamba and former Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) officials Lyndon Bernardo Basan, Conrado Ordesta III, Janeses Ponce, and Dominic Diño. The court found that the government’s charging documents failed to state facts that would actually amount to a criminal offense.
While Rama did not join that initial motion to dismiss, he later asked the court to apply the same ruling to him because he faced the exact same allegations. The Sandiganbayan agreed, noting that the logical defect in the charging documents applied equally to all six individuals.
According to the court, prosecutors merely listed the legal elements of graft without explaining the specific actions each official supposedly committed. This omission violated the constitutional right of the accused to be properly informed of the charges against them, making it impossible to prepare an adequate defense.
The court stressed that criminal charges must contain clear factual details showing how a law was broken, rather than just stating legal conclusions.
While prosecutors argued that the charges were valid because the officials unlawfully awarded government contracts, the Sandiganbayan pointed out that awarding contracts is a normal part of procurement and is not illegal on its own.
The cases originally stemmed from three emergency waste management contracts worth nearly P45 million awarded by the Cebu City Government in December 2021, right after the devastation of Typhoon Odette.
To clear piling garbage, the city entered into negotiated contracts with Jomara Konstrukt Corporation (P4.99 million), ACM Hauling Services (P4.96 million), and ARN Central Waste Management Inc. (P35 million).
While the Office of the Ombudsman argued that the officials improperly used negotiated procurement instead of public bidding, the respondents maintained that emergency procedures were fully allowed under the law because Cebu City was in a state of calamity.
The Sandiganbayan also rejected the prosecution's motion for reconsideration, stating that the government merely repeated old arguments that the court had already addressed. The court noted that prosecutors had previously been given a chance to revise their documents but still failed to fix the vague and deficient filings.
With the charges officially thrown out, the former officials are now cleared of the allegations, bringing a dramatic end to the high-profile legal battle that originally began with a complaint before the Ombudsman in August 2023.