Former head of Paraguayan Central Bank in the Ueno Bank case

O former president of the Paraguayan central bank Carlos Carvallo surrendered to the authorities after issuing a arrest warrant in the context of the scandal concerning the closure of Ueno Bank, which led to the dismissal of President Santiago Peña.

Local media today published photographs of the former president of the Central Bank of Paraguay (BCP), who presented on Friday night at the National Police Department of Investigation, in Asunción, capital of the country.

Carvallo was included in the arrest warrant issued against Peña in the context of an abuse of trust and other crimes that former officials are accused of, published ABC Color.

The now former president of the BCP resigned on Tuesday, after the announcement of the process of resolution or ordered dissolution against Ueno, to which Peña has been associated and received, during his term, millionaire funds from state entities.

Before arriving at the issuing institution in 2023, Carvallo had directed Financiera Ueno, which gave rise to the bank under intervention. To replace him, Peña appointed on Wednesday the economist and former minister Raúl Vera Bogado as the new president of the BCP, an appointment that will have to be approved by the Senate.

After appearing before the Court, Carvallo was transferred to ‘Agrupación Especializada’, a police unit that acts as a detention center for certain detainees and is located in Asunción.

Hours before, and after being found guilty of “bad performance of functions” in a process of destitution in the Senate, Peña was detained at home, from which he was subsequently transferred to the seat of the Presidential Escort Regiment, in the presence of numerous people outside the residence of the now former head of state, local media reported.

The local newspaper “Last Hour” indicated, citing official sources, that the former governor will remain in this “preventive regime”, from where he will be transferred this morning to the Specialized Unit of Economic Crimes and Anti-Corruption of the Prosecutor for the first appearance.

In this case, the Public Prosecutor deducted charges against 27 people, including Miguel Vásquez, one of the founders of Ueno Bank, who was transferred to a provisional detention centre together with six other persons on Friday, in compliance with a preventive detention order by a judge.