Paraguay prosecutors charge Peña and seek his pretrial detention
Prosecutors accuse the ousted president of breach of trust and self-dealing over public and pension money placed in Ueno Bank.
Paraguayan prosecutors filed charges on Saturday against former President Santiago Peña and Carlos Carvallo, until this week the head of the central bank, in the Ueno Bank case, and asked that both be held in pretrial detention.
Peña faces a charge of instigating breach of trust and another of self-dealing as the principal author. Carvallo is accused of those two offenses plus the direct production of false public documents. Four prosecutors signed the charging document, Act No. 7 in case 92/2026.
What prosecutors are asking for
Prosecutors also asked the criminal guarantees court to bar both men from selling or encumbering their assets and to trace their accounts, real estate, vehicles and stakes in companies. The decision is the judge's.
The prosecution's theory
The theory runs like this: between 2023 and 2026, Ueno Bank took in deposits and investments from public and pension entities while lending to companies in its own corporate group, with alleged irregularities. As of September, state money in the bank had reached 3,608,550,782,201 guaraníes and $233.4 million, according to a Treasury report cited by prosecutors.
On Peña, the document points to his shareholding in Ueno Holding, what he later did with those shares and his meetings with officials of the Social Security Institute, Paraguay's pension system, about investments in the bank's paper. On Carvallo, it covers how he authorized and supervised the bank as its regulator, his earlier tie to Financiera Ueno and an Oct. 7 message to the Senate whose content, prosecutors say, differs from the central bank's technical reports.
The charges came a day after the Senate removed Peña for poor performance. Carvallo had resigned on Nov. 3, the day the central bank took control of Ueno Bank, which has about three million customers, and prosecutors detained several of its executives.
A charge is not a conviction; these are prosecutorial theories not yet tested at trial. The prosecutors' statement carries no response from Peña or Carvallo, and the guarantees court will decide whether to order pretrial detention.
