Paraguayan President Santiago Pena announced his resignation on Thursday after the takeover of a bank linked to him blocked millions of people from accessing their money.\n<\/p>\n
Protests have roiled the South American nation after its central bank took control of Ueno Bank on Tuesday, citing a severe capital shortfall.\n<\/p>\n
Opposition lawmakers on Wednesday submitted a request to impeach Pena over the crisis, accusing him of favouritism toward the bank in regulatory and pension fund decisions.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to apologise to the people if at any point I failed. It was never my intention to betray the trust you placed in me,\u201d the right-wing president said in a video announcing his resignation on X.<\/p>\n
His priority is \u201cthe peace of mind of Paraguayans who entrusted their savings to our financial system,\u201d he added.\n<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u2018Swindled\u2019\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Some three million depositors, including pensioners, lost access to their money.<\/p>\n Long lines of people trying to withdraw their money from Ueno branches snaked down Asuncion\u2019s streets on Tuesday and Wednesday, while angry protests swarmed the capital on both evenings.\n<\/p>\n Paraguay\u2019s Central Bank said it took over Ueno due to a severe capital shortfall, in order to \u201cprotect depositors and preserve the stability of the financial system.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Pena owned shares in a group that controlled the bank, but he sold them last year. <\/p>\n His own Colorado Party backed the president\u2019s removal on Thursday, while Congress was debating the request.\n<\/p>\n \u201cIn the face of these accusations, I can\u2019t pretend to be oblivious,\u201d said ruling party deputy Alejandro Aquilera during the debate.\n<\/p>\n \u201cWe have more than three million Paraguayans who have been harmed, who feel betrayed, swindled, deceived,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n Pena had attempted to ease tensions by requesting the resignation of Central Bank president Carlos Carvallo, who subsequently stepped down.<\/p>\n He also enacted a law that set a limit of five business days to return most of the funds to depositors.\n<\/p>\n But the measures proved insufficient, with hundreds of demonstrators in Asunci\u00f3n calling for his removal and clashing with police, who used tear gas and water cannons on the crowd.\n<\/p>\n Pena served as finance minister before becoming president in 2023.\n<\/p>\n Vice President Pedro Alliana will now replace him to lead Paraguay.\n<\/p>\n AFP\n <\/p>\n Source: <\/p>\n Paraguayan President Santiago Pena announced his resignation on Thursday after the takeover of a bank linked to him blocked millions of people from accessing their money. Protests have roiled the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}