Asunción (Paraguay) (AFP) – Giovanni Catolino shakes and sobs when talking about his money trapped in Ueno Bank. More than a million savers in Paraguay have already received payments after the bank collapsed, but this 40-year-old entrepreneur still does not have the funds from his travel agency.

First modification: 11/09/2026 - 14:34

The Central Bank of Paraguay intervened in the digital bank on Tuesday due to solvency problems. Almost three million clients were left without access to their accounts and the crisis precipitated the ouster of President Santiago Peña on Friday.

"We opened a travel agency with my wife, with the money from my compensation from a motorcycle assembly company," Catolino tells AFP. The couple opened the business in June and have between $15,000 and $16,000 tied up, according to their calculations.

"It cost us a lot," he says through tears, a few meters from the Asunción Prosecutor's Office where Peña testified on Saturday. "I lost 16 years of work," laments the businessman, who says he "wants to spit it out."

But not everyone goes through the same uncertainty.

The Central Bank began to return the money on Thursday afternoon and, by Saturday, it maintained that more than 50% of the affected savers had recovered their deposits.

"I was distressed, I can't deny. It never happened to me, but deep down I was confident that the problem was only with that bank and that it would be solved," says Antonio Ruiz Sánchez, a 58-year-old electrical technician.

He says that on Wednesday night "he couldn't sleep" due to the uncertainty regarding his savings.

Finally, the system confirmed that he was included among the beneficiaries and that his funds would be transferred to another bank.

Express judgment

The crisis had sparked protests and riots this week. On Friday night, a day after deputies approved the accusation against him, the Senate removed Peña from office in an express impeachment trial. His vice president, Pedro Alliana, was sworn in as president that same night, while Peña was detained preventively.

He was charged this Saturday with alleged breach of trust and administration for personal gain.

The Prosecutor's Office suspects that he used his influence to get public organizations to invest millions in Ueno Bank, a digital entity in whose controlling group he had shares until 2025.

In the impeachment trial, the deputies reproached him for putting Carlos Carvallo, who had chaired the Ueno financial company, at the head of the Central Bank. The Prosecutor's Office is investigating whether Carvallo ignored the alerts about irregular loans and the risk of the bank's insolvency.

The authorities began to return the deposits of small savers who met certain conditions and announced that the following groups would be progressively incorporated over the next few days.

The new president, Alliana, reported this Saturday that 1,196,000 accounts had already received deposits for about 160 million dollars in total.

Isabel Figueredo was one of the beneficiaries. "I sighed with relief when I came to the bank and made sure my money was safe," he told AFP as he left the Continental bank.

An uncertain future

But the relief of the first beneficiaries contrasts with the anguish of those who continue to wait.

"We want to see the person responsible for this disgrace imprisoned. Jail for Peña!" claimed Macarena Chilavert, a 33-year-old human rights lawyer, in front of the Prosecutor's Office.

Leila Cosini, a 28-year-old student from Asunción, also has her savings trapped. I had chosen Ueno Bank because of the ease of opening an account and the withdrawals it offered.

"It gives me a lot of uncertainty, it gives me a lot of anxiety," he explains to AFP.

His concern transcends the money he had deposited. He also fears for the future of his pension contributions: "I don't know if I'm going to get there, to collect that retirement," he says.

For Cosini, the accusation of the former president does not clear up the uncertainty about his savings either.

"I feel like he is the number one person responsible and everyone has to fall," he says.

© 2026 AFP

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