MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Lost savings and broken trust: life for those hit by Ueno Bank’s closure

Marlyn López, a 43-year-old university lecturer, lives in Piribebuy, about 75 kilometres from Asunción

For nearly three million Paraguayans, November 3 began with a message on their phone screens: “We cannot display your balance.” Early that morning, Paraguay’s Central Bank took over Ueno Bank over a critical solvency problem and froze its deposits. A week later, with President Santiago Peña removed from office and in pre-trial detention, many of those affected still have no access to their money and say they have also lost faith in the country’s institutions.

Marlyn López, a 43-year-old university lecturer, lives in Piribebuy, about 75 kilometres from Asunción. That morning she was about to buy fuel using the bank’s app, where she kept her newly paid salary and some savings, about 24 million guaraníes, or roughly US$3,800. She had only 30,000 guaraníes in cash, about US$5. “I was left with nothing, like nearly three million people,” she told El País. She has survived thanks to colleagues who transferred money to her without being asked. The authorities say they have paid an advance to half of the depositors, but she has yet to receive any notice. “I have not only lost money. I have also lost faith in the authorities, in the state institutions that should have supervised the financial system. I believed them when they said everything was fine,” she said.

Peña had repeatedly defended the soundness of the bank, in which he was once a shareholder, and blamed allegations of irregularities on campaigns by some media outlets. Prosecutors are investigating an alleged scheme of unsecured loans to companies of the Vázquez Group, the bank’s owner, which held some US$850 million in public deposits.

Rubén Causarano, 48, is a blacksmith, mechanic and beekeeper who sells food from a cart on an Asunción street corner. He had about 5 million guaraníes, roughly US$800, in Ueno, and that Tuesday he needed to send money to his daughter so she could travel to her studies. Since he always paid by card or transfer, he had no cash: he broke open the piggy bank where his daughters saved coins so he could buy fuel and drive her to the bus. He then worked for hours repairing vehicles to get paid in cash. “I’m left with the fear that they’ll screw us again. We’ll have to go back to our grandmothers’ old tradition of keeping our money under the mattress,” he said.

“These politicians are crooks; it can’t be that out of greed they have left half the country without money for daily life, without food, without medicine,” added Causarano, who has also yet to be told when he will be repaid. “Now the president has been kicked out, several of them are in jail, but those who take their place are just as crooked. How can we believe them?”

The new president, Pedro Alliana, has promised that everyone affected will recover their savings. Customers with small balances have begun to be repaid, and repayments will be extended to an initial maximum of 40 minimum wages, about US$19,300.