Paraguay prosecutors seek preventive detention for Ueno Bank founder after intervention

Paraguay’s Public Prosecutor’s Office asked on Wednesday for preventive detention for Miguel Vásquez, one of the founders of Ueno Bank, and house arrest for seven other executives after they appeared to give statements. For payment and banking partners in high-risk verticals, the key point is simple: the bank was already under intervention, and the case has now moved from solvency stress into a criminal probe.

1. The crisis broke on Tuesday, when the Banco Central del Paraguay (BCP) ordered Ueno Bank shut after finding that its solvency ratio had fallen to less than half the minimum required. Ueno had 2.9 million clients in Paraguay, a country of 6.1 million people.
2. That same day, BCP president Carlos Carvallo resigned. Before joining the central bank in 2023, he had headed Financiera Ueno, the business that became the basis of the intervened bank.
3. The Public Prosecutor’s Office said 27 people in total have been charged over “alleged financial irregularities” at Ueno Bank. The charges stem from operations carried out between 2025 and 2026, when loans and overdrafts were granted to companies in the same economic group under conditions that, according to prosecutors, did not fit normal credit-risk assessment parameters.
4. After surrendering to authorities, the executives spent the night in police facilities in Asunción. They were then taken away in handcuffs, with their faces covered, and wearing bulletproof vests under a heavy security operation.
5. Among those who appeared before the Prosecutor’s Office were Miguel Vásquez, the bank’s largest shareholder and one of its founders, and board chairman Juan Manuel Gustale Cardoni. Also present were board member Julio Rey Fernández, directors Alejandro Gómez Abente and Diego Duarte Schussmuller, senior executive Miguel Ángel Almada, high-level executive Mariana Torres Rubiani, and second vice president Diana Mongelos González.

Vásquez, Rey and Torres Rubiani refused to testify, according to their lawyers quoted by ABC Color. Outside the Prosecutor’s Office, protesters demanded that the accused be shown with their faces uncovered and complained about losses caused by the bank.