The newly appointed attorney general of Paraguay, Samuel Rojas, has indicated that his main goal upon taking office will be to achieve the recovery of the resources the State lost as a result of the collapse of Ueno Bank, a financial scandal that has dragged ex-President Santiago Peña politically.
Appointed by his substitute in the Presidency, Pedro Alliana, the new head of the General Office of the State Attorney —an organ in charge of representing and safeguarding the legal interests of the Paraguayan State— has made this purpose clear. "The instruction we have received from the President of the Republic is to pursue with forcefulness that all the funds lost by the State be recovered, and we are going to work along that line," he said in statements collected by the Paraguayan newspaper ABC.
The collapse of the financial entity has affected several public institutions that kept part of their resources there, including the Social Security Institute (IPS), the National Commission of Telecommunications (CONATEL), and the National Administration of Electricity (ANDE), which have seen their deposits compromised.
Rojas has reiterated that he will coordinate in a close manner with the Public Prosecutor's Office and has emphasized that Paraguayan legal framework includes rules that provide "certain tools" to "verify, detect and locate all those assets and rights of those persons whose responsibility is involved."
"This is in order to safeguard the civil actions that we are going to raise, in order to recover the funds through a claim for damages and losses," the attorney general added, who until his appointment served as director of Decrees of the Civil Cabinet of the Presidency.
For his part, Alliana, who assumed the head of State last Friday after Peña’s dismissal —currently in prison—, has stated that authorities have already paid to "almost" 95% of the savers harmed by the collapse of Ueno Bank. As he detailed, compensation has been made to 1.74 million depositors, for a total equivalent to 330 million dollars coming from the Deposit Guarantee Fund.