After flood control mess, NIA chief’s daughter transfers ownership of $1.2-M Las Vegas house

A month after the flood control scandal broke out in the Philippines in August of 2025, Claveria, Cagayan Mayor Lucille Angelus “LA” Guillen – whose company also won government flood control projects – transferred her $1.2-million house in Las Vegas, Nevada to a US-based domestic company which she also owns.

The Guillens are a political dynasty of Piddig, Ilocos Norte, and allies of the Marcoses.

Nevada local assessors’ records show that Mayor LA Guillen, the daughter of National Irrigation (NIA) Administrator Eddie Guillen, bought the five-bedroom, five-bathroom estate in October 2017 for $1.265 million, or P63.76 million according to the average exchange rate in 2017. Guillen then transferred the property to Southern Highland Limited LLC at no cost on September 21, 2025, a month after the Philippine government launched an all-out investigation into anomalous flood control and other infrastructure projects.

Guillen also owns the LLC or Limited Liability Company, according to both the deed of the grant, and business records from Nevada. Another managing member of the LLC is Guillen’s uncle, one of the brothers of her mother Piddig, Ilocos Norte Mayor Georgina Salazar Guillen. The entire estate is 5,266 square feet, with five bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, and a pool, according to entries on real estate property pages.

Transferring a property to a domestic LLC is typically done to shield that asset from potential risks. It’s a corporate layer meant to protect personal assets should that property be entangled in liabilities.

The Salazar-Guillen clan is a big politicontractor, or public officials who also own companies that contract with government. For their clan, there are at least four construction companies owned by several members, one of them owned by Mayor LA Guillen herself. For flood control projects alone, these four companies have won at least a billion worth of contracts from the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), according to datasets by the civil society-run Bettergov, or a mirror site of the Philippine Government Electronic Procurement System (Philgeps).

The property was not declared in the 2023 and 2025 Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALNs) of Mayor LA Guillen, which she jointly filed with husband, Councilor Dexter Yapo. Their SALNS, which Rappler obtained from the Office of the Ombudsman, only list two real properties in Ilocos Norte and five business interests, including the two construction companies that contract with government.

Section 8(A) of the Code of Conduct for Public Officials or Republic Act (RA) 6713 requires public officials to declare all their properties in their SALN. We asked Mayor LA Guillen why the Las Vegas property was not declared, as well as her source of funds when she bought it in 2017, but we have not received an answer even after follow up from January 23 to February 9, both to her office at the Claveria Municipal Hall and the office of the family-owned construction company Skyline. Rappler has talked to personnel of both offices by phone, all of whom couldn’t give us a definite answer on when we could expect a response.

Who are the Salazars and Guillens?

The Salazars have ruled Piddig, Ilocos Norte since 2002, starting from Mayor Georgina Guillen’s father, Augustus A. Salazar, who was mayor from 2002 to 2010. After 2010, NIA chief Eddie Guillen and wife Mayor Georgina Guillen have just been swapping terms.

In 2009, the family was sued for corruption over allegations of rigged bidding, ghost employees, and even nepotism. At the time, Mayor LA Guillen was working as an administrative aide to his grandfather at the Piddig Municipal Hall, giving rise to the allegation of nepotism. The rest of the lawsuit accused the patriarch Salazar of conniving with the Guillen couple, private citizens at the time, of rigging the procurement of medicines for the rural health unit. They were also accused of using local government funds to pay municipal employees when allegedly, they were personal staff of Mayor Georgina Gullen and other relatives.

All of these complaints were dismissed by the Office of the Ombudsman in 2012, according to a resolution obtained by Rappler.

In more recent years, the Salazars and the Guillens have been vocal allies of the Marcoses in Ilocos Norte. In December 2022, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. appointed Eddie Guillen as chief of NIA. Rappler has previously reported that NIA has awarded contracts to two companies owned by Guillen’s relatives. Guillen’s office at the time justified that the administrator played no role in the procurements which were done by regional offices.

Overall, the clan has seven members in public offices, sharing four companies among which have won contracts in the municipalities they are serving. The Guillen family owns Skyline Construction Equipment and Development Corporation; Councilor Dexter Yapo owns Dylan Equipment, Construction and Supplies; Vice Mayor Edwin Salazar’s wife owns North Tech Builders and Construction Supply; and Vice Mayor Salazar’s son, Councilor John Patrick Salazar, owns Solid North Construction.

The Guillen family has previously told Rappler that there is no conflict of interest in their contracts. There are no known investigations into the clan so far.

(See Rappler’s Politicontractor maps: click this link for flood control, and this link for all DPWH projects)

Mixing public office and business

On February 20, 2023, Mayor LA Guillen posted on Facebook a meeting of some of her relatives in their capacities as public officials, with the president’s son Ilocos Norte First District Representative Sandro Marcos.

Seen in the photo are Mayor LA Guillen, her mother Mayor Georgina Guillen, her father Administrator Eddie Guillen, and her husband Councilor Dexter Yapo. Her post said that she and her mother, both local chief executives, “took the opportunity to present and discuss their requests for various projects and programs that would be of great help to their townspeople.”

If this meeting happened in February 2023, any outcome would be reflected in the 2024 national budget. Resigned congressman Zaldy Co has alleged that Sandro Marcos made insertions to DPWH line items in the 2023, 2024 and 2025 national budgets, and posted these supposed insertion lists, which Sandro has denied.

We cross-matched the 2024 insertion list and the awarded DPWH projects at least in Piddig, Ilocos Norte. In Piddig alone, three of the Salazar-Guillen construction companies won seven projects worth a total P82.48 million, sourced allegedly from Sandro Marcos’ insertions.

This meeting was part of our list of questions to Mayor LA Guillen, which she has not responded to.

Last December, Sandro Marcos accepted an invitation by the ad-hoc commission, the Independent Commission for Infrastucture, but his session was kept secret from the public. Sandro said he deferred to the ICI to publicize the session, but the ICI said Sandro declared under oath that the video should not be publicized.

There’s also been no known investigation into Sandro Marcos. Another beneficiary of his alleged insertions is the company of President Marcos’ close aide, Justice Undersecretary Jojo Cadiz, who’s also from Ilocos Norte. Cadiz has reported back to work, despite Malacañang announcing his resignation after Rappler exposed his contractor links. – with research from Vicensa Nonato/Rappler.com

Vicensa Nonato is a Rappler intern. She is a third year journalism student at the University of the Philippines Diliman.