The fall of Santiago Peña occurred after a report from the Central Bank of Paraguay (BCP) on the insolvency of Ueno Bank, whose shareholders had been partners of the former president until March 2025. Ueno, which was a minor financier, acquired bank status during his management, which began in 2023. Peña appointed the former CEO of Ueno, Carlos Carvallo, as president of BCP – who was supposed to supervise it -. Carvallo’s wife remained a consultant at the bank. Finally, the government put public funds into the Ueno and, from there, the money was diverted to related companies. Peña ended up committed up to his neck.
The government tried to hide the Ueno situation until the BCP intervened. The Public Ministry is investigating a scheme for selling bad loans to companies in the same group. On July 4, a senior BCP official, Francisco Rivarola, sent a report to the then head of the Superintendency of Banks (SIB), Holger Insfrán, in which he warned about irregularities in portfolio sale operations and the indirect injection of funds into the Ueno. Rivarola had been a SIB supervisor. The document was considered not received and was kept secret, but two of its 25 pages – the first and the last – reached the newspaper “ABC Color”, which published them on the front page on October 7. He previously confirmed its authenticity with sources who had read the full text.
A month earlier, the Senate had addressed a list of questions to the BCP based on Rivarola’s report. It sought to confirm that Ueno lent to companies above legal limits and that US$850 million of public deposits were at risk, a part of them from the Social Security Fund. An internal crisis occurred in the BCP due to the imminence of the scandal. These days you can see interviews that the international press does with a journalist of scenic strength, Mabel Rehnfeldt, who from the newspaper “ABC Color” anticipated the excesses of Ueno, especially the favors to friendly companies. Peña publicly suggested that the newspaper’s journalists were linked to organized crime. The pro-government deputy Alejandro Aguilera promoted a law that penalized the dissemination of information that could be considered financial terrorism with up to ten years in prison.
Santiago Peña, 47 years old, is a renowned economist and financial technocrat, details that could be taken as an aggravating factor. Graduated in Paraguay, he completed a master’s degree in administration at Columbia University, and later was an official at the BCP, an analyst at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Minister of Finance of former President Horacio Cartes, who has been his mentor. In 2025 he declared a fortune of US$3.4 million. With a past free of complaints, he enjoyed high popularity and governed with a majority in both chambers. It is inevitable to think that behind the sloppy management of the financial system, probably for personal benefit, there was the presumption that nothing could touch it. A presumption of impunity. However, his conflicts of interest were so visible that even those close to him turned their backs on him. Cartes issued an indignant statement. Ayayero Aguilera requested impeachment.
Although the collapse of Ueno Bank is only days old, “ABC Color”, through Mabel Rehnfeldt and reporter Juan Daniel Jara, had already revealed significant details of Peña’s modus operandi in October 2025. I have followed Rehnfeldt since 2003, when he uncovered irregular contracts with the state oil company Petropar. Their reports explain, year after year, the unlikely forms that corruption can take in Paraguay. Above all, that which is exercised from power. In the case of Peña, journalists discovered that, in the presidential residence, known as Mburuvicha Róga (“House of the Leader” in Guaraní), there were inexplicable finds and losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars of unknown origin.
A first report reproduced the testimony of Luz Candado, who had been in charge of domestic chores in Mburuvicha Róga for 11 months, until the president fired her in July 2025. She and her family were informally investigated for the theft of an undetermined amount of money that had disappeared from the president’s dressing room. The complaint did not reach the Public Ministry. Military personnel subjected Candado and her husband to a polygraph test. No official results are known. Previously, she had returned to Peña US$200,000 that domestic staff found in the house, in October 2024 and February 2025. Peña made vague comments about the alleged theft and the return. The concrete indications that there was black money in the presidential residence remained unclear.
Other reports revealed that Peña met frequently, in Mburuvicha Róga, with powerful State suppliers, such as the main winner of the tenders of the “Zero Hunger in Schools” program, Miguel Cardona, and with the president of the group that owns Ueno Bank, Miguel Vásquez. The meetings were not on the official agenda, and could only be known because Mrs. Candado, resentful of her dismissal, was a good help to the journalists. It is possible to trace the visits and the benefits obtained by the interlocutors. Will there be an explanation for the hundreds of thousands of dollars that were lost and reappeared in the presidential residence? We do not know the scope of the investigations that are coming. Meanwhile, the system of attack and disinformation that the government had organized to confront its critics, a thousand-headed trolley, is silent.
