Paraguayan politics never ceases to surprise: after the sudden dismissal of Santiago Peña and the rise to power of his vice president, Pedro Alliana, the Guaraní nation now has its sights set on the former president's summer home, more precisely on a secret vault that at the moment no one knows how to open.
"A controlled detonation, the transfer of the former first lady, Leticia Ocampos, or the intervention of other relatives are some of the alternatives analyzed by the Public Ministry to access the hidden vault in the former president's summer residence in San Bernardino [resting town 50 kilometers from Asunción]. The compartment has a sophisticated security system that would include iris recognition," ABC Color noted this Monday.
Peña was dismissed last Friday for his alleged involvement in the bankruptcy of Ueno Bank, a digital bank in which Paraguayans saved massively. The Senate removed him from office with 44 of its 45 votes - the remaining senator was absent - for poor performance of his duties, despite the fact that Peña had submitted his resignation the day before. The bank's intervention left almost three million clients without access to their savings, and the deputies who accused him maintain that the former president used his influence to favor the entity with public funds, something that his defense denies. That same night he was arrested and since then he has spent his days in a military regiment, in preventive detention and on the verge of a trial that could sentence him to several years in prison.
But first you have to open the vault. It is hidden under the swimming pool of the mansion, and the Prosecutor's Office wants to know what it keeps: if it is a hiding place for assets or documents related to the bankruptcy or, as the prosecutor does not rule out, a "panic room", a security area in a country in which organized crime and drug trafficking have a notorious power. Nobody knows how to get in. The facility has, according to Paraguayan media, sophisticated Israeli technology and opens, presumably, with an iris recognition system. Just the iris of the former president or also that of some of his relatives?
Prosecutor Christian Benítez assured that, for the moment, there are no plans to transfer the former president from the place of detention to the summer house so that he can open the vault with his eyes. Trying to do it with the former first lady's iris is a "simpler" alternative, he admitted.
Although there are drastic options, such as resorting to a controlled detonation to open the structure, which is located under a swimming pool that is a real mansion. There are, however, doubts about the possible damage that a detonation "could cause to the elements stored inside."
According to the prosecutor, one of the options is that the vault is actually a "panic room", a security area for the former president in a country in which organized crime and drug trafficking have notorious power.
While deciding what to do with the vault, the Prosecutor's Office is beginning to receive criticism for the fact that Peña continued to use his mobile phone without restrictions. "This, in addition to being an inadmissible privilege, could compromise the investigation and allow him to access his assets and accounts," said opposition senator Esperanza Martínez. Another opposition senator, Rafael Filizzola, warned about the possibility that Peña was "destroying evidence" from his place of detention. Finally, late on Sunday night, the Prosecutor's Office seized the former president's phone.
While the investigation into Peña progresses, Alliana continues to change the configuration of the Government, and this Monday proposed a very symbolic appointment, that of Fernando Rivarola as a member of the board of directors of the Central Bank of Paraguay.
Rivarola is the technician who launched the first alerts, through a report, about the unsustainable situation at Ueno Bank. The then president of the Bank, today in preventive detention, reacted by changing his area to distance him from the possibility of continuing to investigate.
