Paraguay’s President Santiago Peña resigned on Thursday, November 5, under mounting pressure over the collapse of ueno bank, Deutsche Welle reported with AFP, dpa, EFE and Reuters. Peña, a conservative economist who took office in August 2023 for a five-year term, stepped down after Congress president Basilio Núñez and the Honor Colorado faction of the ruling Colorado Party, led by former president Horacio Cartes, withdrew their support while lawmakers were debating whether to remove him from office. The report did not name who takes office next; Peña’s vice president is Pedro Alliana.
Thirty-five opposition lawmakers and ruling party dissidents had submitted impeachment articles in the Chamber of Deputies. The motion alleged that Peña retained influence over ueno despite having sold his shares in Ueno Holding, the conglomerate that includes the bank, in April 2025, that the bank served as a platform for a political and business network, and that he interfered improperly in the state pension institute, the Instituto de Previsión Social (IPS). It also questioned his 2023 appointment of central bank chief Carlos Carvallo, who had previously worked at ueno and resigned on Tuesday. Peña denied wrongdoing and said he was doing everything in his power to protect the savings of ueno’s depositors and the integrity of the financial system.
The bank behind the crisis served about 2.94 million customers, roughly 60 percent of Paraguay’s adult population, and said last month that it held about 800 million dollars of public sector deposits, about a quarter of its total deposits. The central bank ordered the resolution process on Tuesday after finding that ueno’s solvency ratio had fallen to 2.1 percent, far below the 12 percent required by law. Its app, card payments and transfers stopped working and its branches closed, leaving customers queuing outside to try to withdraw their money, and its accounts were also used to process pension payments.
The fallout widened through the week. Authorities detained eight senior executives, including ueno founder Miguel Vázquez and bank president Juan Manuel Gustale. Retirees, depositors, students and workers marched through Asunción on Wednesday demanding Peña resign, and hundreds of employees of ueno and other companies in its parent group protested outside the Legislative Palace on Thursday. In a video message on Wednesday Peña had pledged legislation that would guarantee 100 percent of savers’ deposits and provide the support needed for them to access their money, and the crisis forced him to cancel his attendance at the Ibero-American summit in Madrid.
This site covered the start of the collapse on November 3, when the Banco Central del Paraguay voted to put ueno into resolution, Carvallo resigned, and the deposit guarantee fund began preparing a first payment of up to 10,000,000 guaranies per depositor. What was then a solvency event at one bank has now ended a presidency, and the payout calendar, the IPS money held at ueno and the succession all remain open.