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The Paraguayan Prosecutor's Office is trying to open a hidden vault found during the raid on the summer residence of former President Santiago Peña, within the framework of the investigation into the Ueno Bank case.
Investigators found the compartment behind a false wall on the property located in San Bernardino, about 50 kilometers from Asunción, according to the Paraguayan newspaper ABC Color.
The Paraguayan newspaper indicated that the agents were unable to access the interior of the vault due to its security mechanisms.
The house was sealed and in custody while the authorities search for the necessary means to open the vault, the contents of which are unknown, prosecutors in charge of the investigation announced on Monday.
The raid on Peña's summer home occurred on Sunday, two days after Congress impeached Peña for his alleged responsibility in the Ueno Bank crisis.
The former president—replaced in office by his vice president, Pedro Alliana—remains in preventive detention and has denied having committed irregularities.
image source, Reuters
This Monday afternoon, the Prosecutor's Office also began the search of another residence of Santiago Peña located in the Mbocayaty neighborhood of Asunción, ABC Color reported.
In parallel, another prosecutor-police team began to search the home of Carlos Carvallo, former president of the Central Bank of Paraguay, also accused in the investigation into the Ueno case.
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The crisis broke out last week, when the Central Bank of Paraguay intervened in Ueno Bank due to its solvency problems, leaving nearly three million clients without access to their accounts.
Ueno also concentrated hundreds of millions of dollars from public institutions, including pension system funds.
Paraguayan legislators accused Peña, who had been a shareholder in a company linked to the group that owns the bank, of using his influence to favor the entity.
The vault
The agents managed to open a first door of the vault in Peña's summer residence, but they found a second hatch that prevented them from accessing it, according to prosecutors' statements this Monday, cited by ABC Color.
According to the newspaper, the vault would have a security system of Israeli origin that would include identification by iris recognition.
The Prosecutor's Office is studying requesting the collaboration of family members, including Peña's wife, former first lady Leticia Ocampos, who could have access through that system, although it clarified that they would not be obliged to cooperate.
It has been ruled out, for the moment, to transfer the former president himself to the residence.
The Prosecutor's Office has also raised the possibility of carrying out a controlled detonation with explosives to open the door, something that specialists will have to evaluate, since it could damage structures of the property.
The authorities are also considering the hypothesis that the compartment could be a safe room intended to protect its occupants from a threat.
In a subsequent appearance, prosecutors Silvia González and Nancy Salomón explained that they hoped to have the necessary technical means to open it, without specifying what method they would use.
Salomón indicated that it was decided to keep the home sealed while investigators continue to gather information about the operation of the system.
Peña's summer house
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The summer residence of the former Paraguayan president is also under investigation for the loans he received from Ueno Bank to finance its construction when he was president.
According to the Prosecutor's indictment, the bank granted Peña two simultaneous loans in May 2024 for a total of 3,548 million guaraníes (about US$577,000).
The monthly payments amounted to 239 million guaraníes, about US$39,000, an amount equivalent to about six times his salary as president, according to the document.
To build the residence, Peña would have signed a contract for US$900,000 with the company Gómez Abente SA with an expected execution period of 23 months, although the works were completed in less than a year, Última Hora reported.
This newspaper pointed out that, in one of his asset statements, Peña recorded a total value of about 7.75 billion guaraníes — US$1.24 million — for the property, which included the land, the building, the equipment and the furniture.
The residence had already raised questions before the banking crisis: in January 2025, Peña responded to publications about his assets by ensuring that both he and his wife had worked throughout their lives.
"I consider myself an honest, hard-working person," he said at a press conference.
Searching for assets abroad
The Paraguayan Prosecutor's Office announced this Monday that it maintains contacts with authorities in the United States, Argentina and Luxembourg to locate possible assets of Peña and other people and companies investigated in the Ueno case.
The efforts cover those involved who may have assets abroad, indicated the International Affairs Prosecutor, without offering details about specific people or companies.
The prosecutor assured that the US authorities have offered to collaborate in the identification of assets related to the case in their financial system.
He clarified, in any case, that he did not discuss with the Department of Justice in Washington whether the United States government plans to carry out its own investigation into Ueno.
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