Paraguayan prosecutors have raided the homes of ousted president Santiago Peña and asked Luxembourg for help tracing missing funds, as the investigation into the collapse of Ueno Bank widens into an international hunt for assets.
A raid on Peña’s residence in the capital, Asunción, lasted almost five hours on Monday. Prosecutors seized documents, mobile phones, CCTV footage, tablets and computers. “This procedure was quite important, and we believe it is positive because of the amount of documentation we found,” prosecutor Elena Fiore told reporters.
Investigators also raided a Ueno Bank branch on Monday and seized documents relating to Peña’s investments. On the strength of that material, the prosecutor’s office asked Luxembourg for cooperation in freezing crypto assets, and said it had also sought help from the United States and Argentina. “Work is underway to locate and secure assets abroad, in order to repatriate them and compensate the victims,” a press release stated.
The most striking find so far came at the weekend, when prosecutors searched Peña’s holiday home in the lakeside town of San Bernardino, about 50 kilometres from the capital. Behind a false wall they found a hidden vault fitted with an armoured door and a multi-step security system including iris or facial recognition, fingerprint scanning, a code and special keys. Investigators had still not opened it by Monday. Local newspaper ABC Color reported that the system uses Israeli technology, though that has not been officially confirmed, and prosecutors have weighed options including a controlled detonation or bringing the former first lady to attempt biometric access.
The investigation says Ueno loans partly financed the construction of the San Bernardino mansion, and that its monthly mortgage payments cost six times more than Peña’s presidential salary.
Peña, who was impeached last week and is in pretrial detention, is accused of using his influence as president to steer millions in government deposits to Ueno and of hiding the bank’s financial troubles despite warnings about questionable loans and solvency. He denies all charges.
Ueno began as a small digital-first fintech and within three years became a major bank handling state pensions and government accounts, with about three million customers — nearly half of Paraguay’s population. The Central Bank seized it over solvency concerns and has returned about $160 million to nearly 1.2 million people through a guarantee fund, but the fund does not cover reimbursements above $36,000 per account, leaving uncertainty over the fate of public money deposited in the bank.
Hundreds of workers and teachers marched through Asunción on Monday demanding the recovery of pension funds. Peña’s successor, former vice president Pedro Alliana, has asked ministers and senior state officials to submit their resignations as he reshuffles the government, while senators unanimously approved Jorge Schreiner as the next Central Bank chief.
Sources: AFP, via Europe Says (https://www.europesays.com/lu/14931/); ABC Color, via JFeed (https://www.jfeed.com/news-world/to8aoy). Note: the claim that the vault’s security system uses Israeli technology comes from local reporting by ABC Color and has not been officially confirmed.
