A rapidly-growing digital bank in Paraguay has collapsed, freezing millions of customer deposits and even state funds — and now the country’s president faces an impeachment motion over his links to it.
The broad opposition has filed an impeachment motion against conservative President Santiago Pena over his links to Ueno, the digital bank that just collapsed, according to UPI, cited in International Intrigue’s November 5 briefing.
A bank that served half the country
To give a sense of scale, Ueno was serving about half of Paraguay’s adults. Its collapse has left millions of people unable to access their accounts, with state funds also caught up in the freeze.
The impeachment motion is the sharpest political consequence yet of a banking failure that has shaken one of South America’s smaller economies, where digital banking had grown fast and Ueno had become a household name.
A president under pressure
Pena’s party holds firm majorities in both houses of Paraguay’s legislature, so the impeachment motion faces steep odds. But the scale of the collapse has, as International Intrigue put it, “clearly left blood in the water”.
The case is a reminder of how quickly a much-hyped fintech can fall — and how fast a banking story can become a political crisis when half a country’s adults are locked out of their money.
Ueno’s rise was rapid: a digital bank that grew to serve about half of Paraguay’s adults, promising easy access to banking in a country where many people had never had an account. Its collapse has frozen not only personal savings but state funds, and the political fallout has been swift, with the opposition filing an impeachment motion against President Pena. Whether the motion succeeds is uncertain — Pena’s party holds firm majorities — but the depositors waiting for their money are the ones paying the price.
