Paraguay's Senate removed Santiago Peña as president on 6 November and a judge ordered him into pretrial detention the next day over the collapse of Ueno Bank, which held money for 2.94 million customers.

Prosecutors put the damage to the state at more than US$809 million, the total of state deposits locked inside Ueno when the central bank closed it. The figure measures frozen balances, part of which may be recovered from the bank's assets, and is not a confirmed loss. About 1.9 million customers, in a country of roughly 6.1 million people, had money frozen when Ueno's app, cards and branches stopped working before dawn on 3 November.

The charge sheet alleges that Peña helped place, renew and keep public and pension money at Ueno while he held shares alongside its owners, the Vázquez family. He appointed the man who had chaired Ueno's predecessor company, Carlos Carvallo, to run the central bank that supervised it. Carvallo was detained on 7 November in the same case.

Peña denies wrongdoing and declined to testify before the judge. His lawyer, Ricardo Preda, said Peña never ordered any institution to deposit money at Ueno, never held shares in the bank itself and posed no flight risk now that he no longer holds office. Preda said the defence would challenge the detention.

Between September 2025 and May 2026 Ueno paid about $146 million to three companies owned by its shareholders, putting it about $41.5 million over its legal limit for such lending, central bank inspection files show. When supervisors ordered those loans counted against the limit in June 2026, Ueno sold them to a fourth company in the group, Vinanzas SA, which paid with money that had come from Ueno.

Supervisors recorded the excess in internal memos in September 2025, according to the charge sheet. No regularisation plan was demanded. State money held at Ueno grew through the same period, and on 30 September 2026 Treasury records put it at about $855 million.

The Senate vote and the detention order

Interior Minister Enrique Riera delivered Peña's resignation letter to Congress at about 13:30 local time on 5 November. Within an hour the Chamber of Deputies voted 78 to none to impeach him for poor performance of his duties under Article 225 of the constitution. The charges cited a conflict of interest, regulatory manipulation, breaches of lending limits, personal financial gain and damage to confidence in the financial system. A joint session called to accept the resignation collapsed for lack of quorum.

The ruling Colorado Party withdrew its support for Peña after its chairman, former president Horacio Cartes, wrote on X that the party backed impeachment. Raúl Rubín, an independent deputy who pushed for impeachment, told reporters that two in three Paraguayans could not reach their money and that Peña bore primary responsibility.

Peña did not attend his Senate trial on 6 November. His lawyers, Preda and Adolfo Ferreiro, told senators that the resignation made the trial moot and that they had too little time to prepare, and senators refused a 72-hour extension. At 18:55 local time all 44 senators present, out of 45, voted to convict. Under Article 189 of the constitution an elected former president becomes a senator for life with parliamentary immunity unless convicted in an impeachment trial, so the verdict stripped Peña of that protection. In a farewell message he wrote: "I do not want my presence to be a cause of greater division or instability."

An impeachment conviction is a political judgement by the Senate and carries no criminal finding. The criminal case, number 92/2026, was opened by Attorney General Emiliano Rolón on 5 November. Prosecutors charged Peña with breach of trust as an instigator and with administration for personal benefit as a perpetrator, offences that carry up to 10 years in prison, prosecutor Christian Benítez said.

Judge Humberto Otazú of the economic crimes court ordered Peña held before trial on 7 November, citing a risk of flight and of obstruction, froze his bank accounts and barred him from selling or mortgaging property. Peña is held in a dormitory at the Regimiento Escolta Presidencial, a military unit in Asunción, where he may receive visitors and keep his phone, the unit's commander, Colonel José Dayub, told radio station 1020 AM.

Vice-President Pedro Alliana was sworn in minutes after the Senate vote to serve until 15 August 2028. The lower house had rejected a motion to impeach him too, by 48 votes to 30. Prosecutors are also investigating Alliana over the placement of public funds at Ueno, according to the Associated Press, and he has said he knew nothing of what was happening inside the bank. Opposition senator Rafael Filizzola called Alliana complicit but said the opposition accepted his succession. "We accept this situation to ensure institutional continuity for the country," Filizzola said.

$855 million in state accounts

Treasury records cited in the charge sheet put state funds at Ueno on 30 September 2026 at about 3.61 trillion guaraníes (PYG) and $233.4 million, together worth about $855 million. Prosecutors' figure of more than $809 million is the balance at the moment of failure: about $576.1 million held in guaraníes and $233.4 million in dollars. Public deposits at Ueno in guaraníes grew by 130 per cent in 2025, and by the end of June 2026 government money made up about 29 per cent of the bank's deposits.

The largest public depositor was the Instituto de Previsión Social (IPS), the state pension and health fund for private-sector workers, with a portfolio of about 20 trillion guaraníes, roughly $3.2 billion. In November 2023, three months after Peña took office, the IPS council lowered the score a bank needed to qualify for its deposits, according to IPS regulations published by ABC Color. Ueno ended 2023 holding 250 billion guaraníes of IPS money.

Peña met the IPS president, Jorge Brítez, on 22 and 27 August 2024, according to the charge sheet. On 29 August the IPS council, chaired by Brítez, approved buying up to 250 billion guaraníes, then about $32 million, of seven-year Ueno bonds. Peña called the reporting a media campaign when the purchase became public in October 2024. On 12 November 2024 the council scrapped a rule that capped deposits at any one bank in proportion to that bank's capital. By the end of 2024 Ueno held 1.77 trillion guaraníes from IPS, more than its own effective capital of 1.56 trillion.

Paraguay's pension supervision law limits a fund's holdings at a single bank to 10 per cent of its portfolio. By April 2026 IPS had 2.15 trillion guaraníes at Ueno, almost 11 per cent. Hugo Díaz, the IPS investment director, told the council in July that Ueno was the only bank over the limit and said demand deposits did not count as investments. The pension supervisor ruled that they did. IPS stopped placing new money at Ueno during 2026, and Díaz said on 30 October that the bank held 9.7 per cent of the portfolio and was no longer invited to tenders. About 32,000 retirees also drew their pensions through Ueno accounts.

Itaipú, the hydroelectric dam Paraguay runs jointly with Brazil, began banking with Ueno in January 2025. On 3 November it held 115.2 billion guaraníes and $163.8 million there, about $182 million in all, according to its own statement, equal to 7.6 per cent of what it received in Brazilian power payments over the period. The national electricity company ANDE had about $46 million from Inter-American Development Bank and Taiwanese loans and about $6 million of its own at Ueno, and its staff pension fund another 43.1 billion guaraníes. The economy ministry, the plant health agency Senave, the state oil company Petropar and the telecommunications regulator Conatel also had funds frozen.

The state development bank, the Agencia Financiera de Desarrollo (AFD), had an exposure to Ueno equal to 38 per cent of the bank's net equity in June 2026, Moody's said. The charge sheet's case against Peña rests on the allegation that he influenced where these institutions placed their money. The economy ministry said Ueno had won its share of state placements by offering the highest rates and that no bank could take more than 25 per cent of any tender.

Peña's shares and the Vázquez family

Peña bought 1,500 shares in Credicentro, the Vázquez family's lending company, in March 2019, according to a 2025 criminal complaint. He was then out of government, working as a banker for a group owned by Cartes, who had earlier made him finance minister. Credicentro became Ueno Holding in 2022, and Peña's stake grew to 6,144 shares, about 1.58 per cent of its capital, declared at almost $1 million, according to the charge sheet.

Peña kept the shares for the first 19 months of his presidency. In April 2025, after ABC Color published the shareholding, Peña said he had sold at the end of March. Ueno Holding told the central bank on 4 April that a capital reduction had left Grupo Vázquez and Víctor Hugo Vázquez as its only shareholders. Peña later said Grupo Vázquez had used its majority to cancel his shares. Preda said Peña held shares only in Credicentro and Ueno Holding, never in the bank, and disposed of them between late 2024 and early 2025.

Peña also held a savings certificate at Ueno worth 2.4 billion guaraníes, about $330,000, and a $48,000 bond issued by ITTI, the group's software company. His brother, Francisco Peña, held shares from March 2024 to March 2025 in U Holdings, the Luxembourg company that controls the bank.

Carvallo chaired Financiera Ueno from June 2021 until 14 August 2023, the day before Peña's inauguration. Peña named him president of the Banco Central del Paraguay (BCP), and he took office on 1 September 2023. On 22 November the central bank approved Financiera Ueno's conversion into a bank, an application begun in 2021 under President Mario Abdo Benítez. The central bank has said Carvallo recused himself from decisions involving Ueno. Prosecutors say his wife, María Silvia Vázquez de Carvallo, billed Grupo Vázquez for consultancy work on dates they consider significant. Carvallo disclosed the commercial relationship in 2023, according to ABC Color.

Prosecutors allege that Peña received Federico Miguel Vázquez Villasanti, the group's controlling shareholder, privately at the presidential residence, Mburuvicha Róga, at important moments in the bank's expansion between December 2023 and April 2025. In August 2025 the two men travelled to Finland on a trip that included Nokia. On the first working day after they returned, Ueno issued the bid guarantee for a 5G tender won by a group company, according to ABC Color.

The charge sheet further alleges that Peña kept two packages of about $100,000 each in cash in a private part of the residence, drawing on a press investigation. Vázquez has called Peña "a true friend". Peña publicly defended the central bank's supervision of Ueno until 27 October.

From Mercado 4 to the Visión merger

The Vázquez business began in 1956 as a stall in Mercado 4, Asunción's largest street market, and Víctor Hugo Vázquez opened Credicentro in 1984. His son Federico Miguel built Grupo Vázquez into 28 companies in technology, cattle, logistics, media, tourism and retail. At the end of April 2026 he owned 75.94 per cent of the group and controlled 94 per cent of its votes.

The group bought Financiera El Comercio on 6 September 2021, merged it with Credicentro that December and rebuilt the result as Financiera Ueno, an app-based lender for people without bank accounts. Ueno opened as a bank on 1 December 2023 with about 500,000 customers. More than a million Paraguayans opened their first account there, according to the bank. Ueno put its name on the national football stadium under a contract with the Paraguayan Football Association worth about $12 million.

In January 2024 Ueno announced it would absorb Visión Banco, a 30-year-old lender with about 70 branches and 8.63 per cent of its loans in arrears. The central bank gave final approval on 21 June and the banks merged on 28 June. The approval let Ueno defer recognising losses on almost $300 million of Visión's bad loans over as long as 20 years, Ueno's president, Juan Manuel Gustale Cardoni, confirmed in October 2024. Its audited accounts for 2025 record a trust holding merger expenses and investments worth about $320 million, written down by about $24 million a year, and Ueno undertook to pay no ordinary dividends while the allowances lasted.

A rating agency's report in November 2024 found that Ueno's capital rested on that regulatory relief and on subordinated bonds, with tangible capital at 8.4 per cent of assets against a system average of 11 per cent. Ueno said in October 2026 that the merger terms complied with the rules and matched the allowances granted in every earlier Paraguayan bank merger.

Ueno's assets grew from $1.67 billion in September 2024 to $4.2 billion by June 2026, against equity of $401 million. Its reported arrears rate was 0.6 per cent and it declared a first-half profit of $37 million in 2026, up from $14 million. In the same half lending grew by 30 per cent and deposits by 10 per cent, lifting loans from 76.75 per cent of deposits to 91.9 per cent, according to Fitch. Overdue loans rose by 28.7 per cent in the first quarter.

Loans to the owners' companies

Paraguayan banking rules cap a bank's lending to companies that share its owners. For Ueno the cap was about $82 million.

In September 2025 ITTI and Grupo Vázquez transferred their shares in three companies, Mowi SA, Grupo Hendy SA and Grupo M SA, to people the central bank's file describes as trusted associates, among them ITTI employees. Grupo M runs the payments platform Pagopar and Grupo Hendy the online marketplace Hendyla, businesses Grupo Vázquez had owned since 2016. At the end of October 2025 Ueno asked the central bank to stop treating the three as related parties. It attached no supporting documents, and the request went unanswered for seven months.

Mowi received its first loan, $12.5 million, on 26 September 2025, a week after its ownership changed. Within four days the money had gone to ITTI and to Redipro, which used it to cover overdrafts at two other banks that had paid cheques issued by ITTI and another group company. Inspectors found the file for that loan missing from Ueno's document system. The three borrowers shared an office and about a dozen online banking operators, all of them ITTI staff. At the end of 2025, 84 per cent of Mowi's assets were intangible, it had lost money for four consecutive years and its debts were 12.5 times its equity.

Ueno paid the three companies about $146 million in loans and overdrafts between September 2025 and May 2026. The loans ran for seven and 10 years, were signed by the borrower alone and carried no real collateral, according to the charge sheet. By the end of April 2026 the three owed 743.8 billion guaraníes, about $123 million, equal to 30 per cent of Ueno's effective capital and about $41.5 million over the cap.

Central bank files list at least 12 shareholder-owned companies that received loans. Nubicom Paraguay, founded in January 2025 with capital of $33, won four of eight 5G spectrum sub-bands from Conatel for about $2 million and then came under Grupo Vázquez's control. In May 2026 Ueno opened an unsecured $85 million credit line for it. The property developer Grupo Berilo received $69 million, almost half the cost of its project.

Nuevo Mundo Entertainment SA, owned by Rodrigo Nogués, received about $33 million without collateral for a leisure and parking development on state port land in Asunción, after the project budget rose from $5.16 million without itemised costings. Inspectors traced most of each disbursement leaving Nuevo Mundo's accounts within minutes for ITTI, Grupo Vázquez and Vinanzas, where it bought their notes or settled debts among them.

The Vinanzas sale

The central bank ordered Ueno in June 2026 to treat Mowi, Grupo Hendy and Grupo M as related parties and recalculate its exposure. On 15 June Ueno sold their loans for $74.4 million in cash to Vinanzas SA, owned by the same shareholders. Central bank rules allow such sales only for cash and forbid a bank from financing the buyer directly or indirectly, a prohibition set out in Article 7 of central bank Resolution 15 of 2024.

Vinanzas had about $94,000 in its accounts the day before the sale, according to the charge sheet. It first received $76.1 million from other companies. Two of them, Satec and HD Invest, had borrowed $20 million and $35 million from Ueno and used the money to buy loans from Vinanzas. A central bank findings report dated 5 August 2026 concluded that Ueno had financed the purchase of its own loans, a serious breach of the rules. The Superintendency of Banks had treated the excess as resolved in mid-June.

Senate questions sent to the central bank in September described a variant of the same chain, ABC Color reported. In that version Technoma SA and Factopar SA bought bonds issued by ITTI and Grupo Vázquez and supplied the money used for the purchase. The sale cleared the loans from Ueno's books while their risk stayed with the bank.

What the supervisors knew

Monthly controls in September 2025 showed Ueno reporting no excesses while the central bank's own credit register showed it over the limit, and supervisors wrote three internal memos that month, according to the charge sheet. Another memo followed in November 2025. In late April 2026 central bank staff confirmed that Ueno had been over the cap since the start of the year, and in June the central bank board recorded observations about Ueno in its minutes.

ABC Color reported in September that, under Article 6 of Law 2334 of 2003 and the General Banking Law, an excess over prudential limits lasting more than 10 consecutive calendar days leaves the supervisor no discretion. The supervisor must then demand a regularisation plan and impose precautionary measures. The excess recorded in the charge sheet lasted at least from January to June 2026.

Fernando Rivarola had run the supervision department of the Superintendency of Banks for about two years when a presidential decree on 6 July 2026 moved him to the AFD's board. On 10 July he emailed the bank superintendent, Holger Insfrán, a memorandum arguing that the Vinanzas sale appeared to be prohibited indirect financing of related parties and that the excess should be treated as still in place. The superintendency "could hardly accept as adequate" the corrective measure, he wrote, and he recommended a formal regularisation plan under the resolution law.

Rivarola also judged the terms of Ueno's loans to several other related companies to be very poor. The central bank said later that the superintendency had already been examining the same transactions for more than a month when Rivarola wrote.

Antonio Barrios, then a Colorado Party senator aligned with Cartes and since 6 November the vice-president chosen by Congress, received the memo and has said it reached him anonymously. Senators sent the central bank formal questions in September, asking what it had done with Rivarola's memo and its own legal unit's opinions and why Rivarola had been moved. The central bank opened disciplinary proceedings against Ueno on 24 September. Carvallo and Insfrán did not answer repeated requests from ABC Color for their account during September.

On 7 October Carvallo's central bank told senators that Ueno had been required on 24 July to add certain companies to its related group and recalculate its exposure, and that the excess had been corrected. Ueno said on 14 October that no sanction, fine or regularisation plan had been imposed. Prosecutors now allege that the central bank under Carvallo gave the Senate incomplete or altered information on Ueno, including the October report.

On 18 October the Association of Banks of Paraguay asked the central bank to report on the solvency of banks that had received merger allowances and warned of one bank's exposure to companies in its own group. Senators from the Colorado Party and the opposition asked Peña to replace the central bank's leadership, and he refused. Fitch moved Ueno's outlook to negative, citing rapid balance-sheet growth and a high level of intangible assets, and its dollar bonds fell below 90 cents.

Ueno announced a $100 million capital plan on 29 October, with $50 million due in November. Its total capital ratio had been 15.01 per cent in March against a legal minimum of 12 per cent. Adjustments imposed by inspectors, more than 1.6 trillion guaraníes in all, cut it to 5.56 per cent, and the bank also failed to restore a $70 million legal reserve. The central bank board voted unanimously on 2 November to begin resolution and announced it at about 03:00 local time on 3 November.

At a press conference on 3 November Carvallo and board member Marco Aurelio González said they too had savings trapped at the bank. Carvallo closed it by thanking the Superintendency of Banks for handling the case with rigour, according to La Política Online.

The central bank has defended its handling of Ueno on two grounds: that the superintendency was already examining the Vinanzas transactions before Rivarola wrote, and that the 24 July order to recalculate exposure corrected the excess. The central bank's own findings report of 5 August had by then concluded that Ueno financed the sale. IPS still held 9.7 per cent of its portfolio at Ueno on 30 October, and the deposits of Itaipú, ANDE and the economy ministry were in place when the bank closed four days later.

Customers locked out

Ueno served about 60 per cent of Paraguay's adults, including people who had no other bank account. Natalia Cuéllar, a medical student, found out when she could not pay her bus fare on the way to an exam. "I had all my savings there, for my fees, transport, day to day," she said. Deisy Asva, a 20-year-old nursing student in San Lorenzo, near Asunción, lost the account she used to top up her transport card and buy food at university.

Workers paid into Ueno could not reach their wages and merchants could not pay suppliers, and the importers' association Asimcopar warned of a semi-paralysis in trade. Utility companies said they would not penalise customers whose automatic payments had run through the bank. At least 10 players on the national football team kept their savings at Ueno, their lawyer, Rodrigo Codas, said. Hundreds of customers gathered outside Ueno's branches in Ciudad del Este, on the Brazilian border.

The labour ministry put the number of Ueno employees affected at 4,621, and former staff protested outside the central bank on 5 November over severance pay. ITTI employs more than 900 people in Argentina, where staff said they had received neither their monthly salary nor severance. "This was an enormous betrayal of trust," said Yinal López, an ANDE worker whose pension fund had money at Ueno.

Hundreds of depositors and pensioners gathered at the Panteón de los Héroes in central Asunción on the night of 3 November before police dispersed them. Riot police blocked a march on Congress, protesters scuffled with officers outside Mburuvicha Róga, and demonstrators kept vigil outside Congress through the impeachment, chanting for Peña to be sent to Tacumbú prison.

Charges against 27 people

Prosecutors have charged 27 people over the collapse. Vázquez faces counts of breach of trust and attempted fraud. Judge Rodrigo Estigarribia ordered Vázquez, Gustale, Julio Daniel Rey Fernández, Alejandro Gómez Abente, Diego Fernando Duarte Schussmuller and Miguel Ángel Almada Frutos, Ueno's statutory auditor, held before trial, going beyond prosecutors' request for detention of Vázquez alone. Diana Leticia Mongelós González and Mariana Torres Rubiani are under house arrest with electronic tags. Police seized nine luxury cars from Vázquez's home, together with a yacht and light aircraft.

Carvallo signed his resignation at Peña's request on 3 November, surrendered to police on the night of 6 November and was charged the next day with breach of trust, administration for personal benefit and producing public documents with false content. Otazú ordered him held for 15 days at a police unit, the Agrupación Especializada, and froze his assets. Board member Miguel Ángel Mora, who signed the central bank's file on Ueno sent to the attorney general on 3 November, has been charged with producing false public documents. The extended complaint also names board members Liana Caballero and González and former economy minister Carlos Fernández.

A court has ordered the seizure of $70 million and 1.62 trillion guaraníes in assets belonging to the directors and to the shareholding companies U Paraguay, U Holdings and Grupo Vázquez. Prosecutors have asked for Mowi, Grupo Hendy, Grupo M, Vinanzas and three other companies to be barred from selling or mortgaging assets. Itaipú, ANDE, the economy ministry and other state bodies have filed criminal complaints against Ueno's directors. None of those charged has been convicted, and the central bank's findings of rule breaches are regulatory conclusions that the courts have yet to test.

U Holdings, OTP Bank and the New York bonds

Ueno is controlled through U Holdings, registered in Luxembourg, of which Grupo Vázquez owned 86.73 per cent. Hungary's OTP Bank bought 9.99 per cent for $47 million in a deal completed in 2026. U Holdings is among the shareholding companies whose assets a court has ordered seized.

In March 2026 Ueno sold $350 million of five-year bonds on international markets at a coupon of 6.7 per cent, arranged by JP Morgan and Bank of America and the largest corporate bond sale in Paraguay's history. The sale followed Paraguay's first investment-grade ratings from S&P Global Ratings and Moody's. The bonds are governed by their own terms, and holders are preparing claims in New York.

A $7.54 million loan to Nubicom on 9 June 2026 went largely abroad, about $4.6 million to an Argentine partner company's account at Banco Macro and $1.2 million to Nokia in Finland. The transfers are recorded in the central bank's files.

In February 2026 Ueno paid $100,000 as a "Diamond" sponsor of a conservative gala at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, at which the Brazilian federal deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro presented an award. The sponsorship was paid four months before the Vinanzas sale, while the bank was over its related-party limit. Brazilians received about 23,500 of the 40,600 residence permits Paraguay issued in 2025 and a further 22,628 in the first half of 2026, according to the national migration directorate. The deposit guarantee covers them on the same terms as Paraguayans.

What can be recovered

Law 2334, passed in 2003 after Paraguay lost 23 banks and 49 finance companies to failures from 1995 onward, covers up to 75 monthly minimum wages per depositor at each institution, currently 228.3 million guaraníes or about $38,000. The central bank estimates that 97 per cent of Ueno's depositors are fully covered. Measured by value only about 30 per cent of Ueno's deposits fell within the guarantee, Moody's said, and about 40 per cent of private deposits were uninsured. The guarantee fund held about $1.6 billion in liquid assets in September 2026, roughly twice Ueno's insured deposits.

Congress passed and Peña signed on 4 November an emergency law letting each depositor draw an advance of up to 40 minimum wages, 121.7 million guaraníes or about $19,800, within five working days. By 7 November the central bank had paid 1,196,000 depositors who owed Ueno nothing and held up to 10 million guaraníes, a total of 996 billion guaraníes or about $160 million, the interim central bank president, Pedro Acosta, said. Withdrawals from investment funds holding Ueno assets were suspended.

About 120 central bank staff were sent to Ueno's branches on 3 November to begin counting, and interveners appointed by the Superintendency of Banks are valuing the bank's assets as of the date of the resolution. Debts owed to Ueno remain payable and are deducted from what a customer receives.

Resolution differs from bankruptcy in that the central bank can move deposits to sounder banks through a competitive process before Ueno's remaining assets are sold to pay creditors. Moody's said contagion should stay contained if the process was quick and orderly, and put the regulatory capital of Paraguay's banks at 17.1 per cent of risk-weighted assets in September 2026. The banks' association said on 3 November that its members had seen no withdrawals from other banks.

Public bodies and private customers with balances above the ceiling will be repaid only from what Ueno's assets realise, and IPS ranks first among large depositors. Alliana has promised full compensation with priority for the poorest, and on 7 November the government said it would guarantee pensions and the annual bonus for retirees paid through Ueno. IPS has said it will pay November pensions and the bonus through other banks by 17 November.

Alliana told ministers to report to him daily and to limit foreign travel. "I don't want anyone lukewarm in charge of this mission," he said. He named Ariel Martínez interior minister, Rolando de Barros chief of staff and Juan Carlos Baruja public works minister, and kept the ministers of defence, Óscar González, and justice, Rodrigo Nicora.

Paraguay's last banking collapse began in April 1995, when the discovery of a large fraud at the central bank was followed by the failure of Bancopar and Banco General. Of 37 banks operating before 1995, 13 survived the waves of failures that followed in 1997, 1998, 2002 and 2003. Thousands of savers lost their life savings, and Law 2334 was written to make depositors whole the next time. Ueno held about 16.95 trillion guaraníes of deposits from 2.81 million depositors at the end of September 2026, more depositors than any other institution the guarantee fund covers.

The central bank's exclusion balance, separating Ueno's sound assets and its deposits for transfer to other banks, is due within 15 days of the 2 November resolution. It will set how much of the $809 million in frozen public money, and of private balances above $38,000, can be recovered. Peña's nominee to lead the central bank, the economist Raúl Vera Bogado, named on 4 November, still awaits Senate approval.