The Public Prosecutor’s Office of Paraguay has filed this Friday a formal charge against former President Santiago Peña and three former executives of the Central Bank for a alleged crime of criminal association, all of them already arrested in the context of the Ueno Bank case, whose collapse has left some three million clients unable to access their savings.
Peña, removed by Congress last week after the scandal broke, has been identified by the Public Ministry as the main person responsible for the network that would have operated from the Central Bank to benefit Grupo Vázquez, a conglomerate linked to Ueno Bank, according to a statement released by the Prosecutor’s Office.
To this charge of criminal association, three other accusations connected with the same facts are added: breach of trust, administration for personal benefit, and immediate production of public documents containing false content.
Along with the former head of state, three other former senior officials of the Central Bank of Paraguay have also been charged. Previously, its former director Carlos Carvallo had already been prosecuted, who was proposed for that position by Peña himself.
In the official note, it is detailed that these people “would have had knowledge of technical reports that warned about excesses in credit limits related to companies linked to Ueno Bank and (...) would not have promoted the corresponding corrective measures”.
The Public Ministry has requested pretrial detention for one of the former executives and home arrest with an electronic ankle monitor for the other two, in addition to the blocking of all their bank accounts.
The reports prepared by the prosecutors on this case indicate the existence of operations without the due guarantees, which put at risk the viability of the financial institution and, consequently, the funds of the millions of savers who entrusted their money to the bank.