Short answer. Yes. Under Article 185 of the Revised Penal Code, paying, promising or threatening a person so that he stays away from a public auction is a crime when the aim is to drive the price down. The person who solicits or accepts that pay-off is punished on the same footing.
What the law says
Any person who shall solicit any gift or promise as a consideration for refraining from taking part in any public auction
Revised Penal Code, Article 185 — Machinations In Public Auctions. Read the full provision →
What the law says
with intent to cause the reduction of the price of the thing auctioned
Revised Penal Code, Article 185 — Machinations In Public Auctions. Read the full provision →
Two ways of committing the offence
Article 185 punishes two different people, and you can fall on either side of the deal. The first is the bidder who solicits a gift or promise in exchange for keeping quiet and not bidding. The second is the person who tries to push bidders away from the auction, whether by threats, gifts, promises, or, in the words of the article, any other artifice. The law does not care whether the arrangement is a cash envelope, a side contract, a job offer or a veiled warning. What matters is that a bidder was induced or frightened out of the room so that the bidding would be thinner than it should have been.
The intent that has to be proved
The offence is not simply about a payment. The article requires that the scheme be carried out with intent to cause the reduction of the price of the thing auctioned. That element is what separates a crime from an ordinary business decision. Two neighbours who agree that only one of them will bid because the other cannot afford the property are not, on that fact alone, committing this offence. Bidders who secretly divide a set of lots among themselves so that no lot is ever contested, and the seller collects far less than an open sale would have produced, are a very different matter. Prosecutors look for the agreement, the money or threat, and the depressed price together.
What the article does not cover
Article 185 speaks of a public auction. A purely private sale between two people, or a negotiation that never took the form of an auction, falls outside it, though other offences or civil remedies may still apply. Simply losing an auction to a better-funded bidder is not a crime. Neither is declining to bid because you changed your mind, so long as nobody paid you or leaned on you to withdraw. Bear in mind too that a rigged auction can expose the participants to separate liability under procurement, competition or public-officer laws when government property or a government contract is involved.
What it costs, and what to do
The penalty is prision correccional in its minimum period together with a fine expressed as a percentage of the value of the thing auctioned, which means the larger the property, the heavier the fine. Because the fine here is pegged to value rather than to a fixed peso figure, it was not among the amounts revised by Republic Act No. 10951 (2017). If you were offered money to stay away from a bidding, keep the message, the receipt or the name of the person who approached you, and do not sign anything. If you are the seller and suspect the bidding was arranged, gather the bid records first, then take advice on whether to pursue a criminal complaint, annul the sale, or both.