Paraguay's Senate removed President Santiago Peña from office on Friday, 6 November 2026, at the end of an impeachment trial opened over the collapse of ueno bank. The vote ended with 44 in favour of removing him and none against, in a 45-seat chamber. Vice-President Pedro Alliana succeeds him and is to serve out the term, which ends in August 2028.
It is the second removal of a Paraguayan president by impeachment in little more than a decade. The previous one was Fernando Lugo's, in 2012 — a case still open before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and one the Senate president, Basilio "Bachi" Núñez, had cited as a precedent when the process began.
The charge: poor performance of duties
The libelo acusatorio — the articles of impeachment — approved by the Cámara de Diputados (Chamber of Deputies) with 78 votes, according to the Colombian outlet Semana, accused Peña of poor performance of his duties, not of a crime. The case rested on three lines: political responsibility for the lender's collapse; the alleged channelling of state bodies' money into the bank, including funds of the Instituto de Previsión Social (Paraguay's social security institute); and the president's own business ties to the bank, in whose controlling company he held shares until 2025.
The Senate's decision is not a criminal conviction. Any criminal liability is a matter for the ordinary courts.
Peña denied wrongdoing and argued that the matter belongs to financial supervision.
A resignation that was never accepted
The president had submitted his resignation on Thursday, but the joint session of Congress that was to take it up lost quorum when lawmakers from his own bloc walked out. With no resignation accepted, Peña stayed in office and Congress pressed ahead with impeachment.
"I know we are living through hours of worry and uncertainty," the president said in a message released before the session, in which he announced he would exercise his right to a defence.
His lawyers asked for a 72-hour extension, arguing that they had received the 15-page indictment and some 300 pages of annexes at 10.15pm the previous night, and that less than twelve hours to respond breached due process. The Senate rejected the request and moved to a vote without debate.
For the opposition, Senator Esperanza Martínez called the process a "soap opera" and warned: "Part three of the soap opera is what happens after this session."
The bank behind the crisis
The Banco Central del Paraguay (BCP, the country's central bank) took over ueno bank on Tuesday for insolvency. The move froze the money of about 2.9 million customers — in a country of just over 6.9 million people — and caught deposits held by public bodies. Eight of the bank's directors were detained, and savers protested outside Congress amid a heavy police deployment.
On Thursday night the BCP began paying out the deposit guarantee, capped at 10 million guaraníes (about USD 1,565) for a first group of savers who met the conditions. The fallout crossed the border: in Argentina, workers have been suspended without pay because of the bank's failure.
The crisis also cost Interior Minister Enrique Riera his job; he resigned. Carlos Humberto Benítez González was named acting minister by Decree 7199.
One figure captures the speed of the episode: four days passed between the takeover of the bank, on Tuesday, and the removal of the president, on Friday.
With information from ABC Color, Infobae, Semana, Pauta, El Once and El Sol.
