Paraguay's lower house voted unanimously on Thursday to impeach President Santiago Peña, only minutes after he announced his resignation, capping three days of street protests over the collapse of a major digital bank tied to his government that froze the savings of millions of people.
The 78-0 vote was a striking repudiation from Peña's own long-ruling Colorado Party, whose lawmakers sided with the opposition after demonstrations shook the capital, Asunción. The charges now move to the Senate, where a two-thirds majority is required to convict the president and formally remove him from office. Congress was expected to accept Peña's resignation at 5 p.m., clearing the way for Vice President Pedro Alliana to be sworn in an hour later to serve out the term through August 2028, with lawmakers expected to choose a new vice president.
Peña, a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, announced he was stepping down in a video posted to X as lawmakers debated his impeachment, citing "the stability of our country, social peace and the need to preserve our democratic institutions." He expressed contrition but stopped short of accepting responsibility for the crisis. "I also want to apologize to the people if I have failed them at any point," he said. "It was never my intention to betray the trust they placed in me."
Until last year, Peña held a stake in a company related to Ueno Bank, the digital lender at the center of the turmoil. Ueno grew from an obscure finance company into a household name in less than five years, winning a banking license in 2023 and claiming more than 60% of Paraguay's adults as customers. It attracted depositors with generous cash-back offers on groceries, expanded to more than 70 locations, sponsored the national soccer team and put its name on the country's main stadium.
Government money flowed into Ueno under Peña, and he appointed Carlos Carvallo, president of Ueno's predecessor Financiera Ueno, to run the central bank, the agency charged with supervising the lender. As of last month, Ueno reported holding roughly $800 million in public deposits, about a quarter of its total, including money from the state pension and health fund and the operators of Paraguay's giant hydroelectric dams.
Warnings had been mounting inside the central bank. In June, inspectors found a pattern of risky lending to insiders, with large sums going to companies tied to Ueno's owners beyond what the law allows and without enough collateral, the newspaper ABC Color reported. On a single day in September 2025, nearly $39 million went to three such companies. Peña repeatedly brushed off the warnings, dismissing the concerns as recently as last month as a smear campaign that was spooking the public.
On Monday, regulators investigating the loans found poorly documented lending and expenses the bank had wrongly counted as assets. Once the books were corrected, Ueno's capital fell to less than half the legal minimum. The central bank seized the lender on Tuesday and announced plans to move customers' accounts and any assets still holding value to other banks before liquidating what remains. Ueno's app, cards and branches went dark, and a rush to open accounts elsewhere crashed other banks' mobile apps on Wednesday. Officials appealed for calm and said they had begun repaying depositors, opening new accounts for about 280,000 people who had banked only with Ueno.
"The banking system is sound," insisted Pedro Acosta Bernal, appointed interim central bank president on Wednesday after Carvallo resigned at Peña's request. Authorities have detained eight senior Ueno executives, including founder Miguel Vázquez and bank President Juan Manuel Gustale, and prosecutors charged 27 bank officials and business associates with offenses including breach of trust and attempted fraud. Lawyers for several of the detained said they needed time to review the allegations before commenting.
On Thursday, hundreds of employees of Ueno and other companies belonging to its parent conglomerate, Grupo Vázquez, protested outside the Labor Ministry demanding severance and unpaid wages. A day earlier, retirees, depositors, university students and workers flooded the streets of the capital, chanting "We want your head, Peña!" and carrying signs calling him "the enemy of savers" and pleading "Give us back our money," as riot police fired pepper spray and rubber pellets. "Santiago Peña and the Colorado Party have stolen all our savings," said Luis Pineda, one of the protesters. Only Venezuela ranks worse in South America on the latest corruption perceptions index from Transparency International. At the national stadium that once bore Ueno's name, the bank's logo had already been scrubbed away, while fresh graffiti across the capital denounced politicians as thieves.
