Paraguayan prosecutors found nothing inside the concealed vault at ousted President Santiago Peña’s $1.23 million summer residence in San Bernardino after he provided the access code from jail, El Espectador reported. Prosecutor Silvia González said the compartment behind a false wall turned out to be a new, unused panic room with no cash inside. Investigators had been unable to breach the inner armored door during a Nov 8 raid because of its level 7 Israeli security system with face, iris and fingerprint recognition.
The raid is part of a criminal investigation into the collapse of Ueno Bank, which partly financed Peña’s mansion with loans carrying monthly payments nearly six times his presidential salary. As Ueno’s record bond issue fell below 6 cents on the dollar, prosecutors asked the US, Luxembourg and Argentina to help trace diverted funds and are examining $850 million in public money placed at the lender, including $380 million from the state pension fund. Employees at Ueno and an affiliated brokerage also tried to destroy documents mentioning Peña shortly before police raids, GloboNews reported.
Peña, a shareholder and business partner in Ueno parent Grupo Vázquez until March 2025, is in pretrial detention on charges of breach of trust and administration for personal gain after the Senate voted 44-0 on Nov 6 to impeach him rather than accept a resignation that would have granted him a lifetime Senate seat and legal immunity. Paraguay’s central bank seized Ueno on Nov 3 after $146 million in related party loans to three Grupo Vázquez companies pushed its solvency ratio down to about 6%, half the 12% legal minimum, freezing $2.8 billion in deposits across 3 million customers.
