*Paraguay’s attorney general, Emiliano Rolón, has announced that his office will investigate recent reports that former president Mario Abdo Benítez (2018-2023) kept millions of dollars in undeclared bank accounts in the Seychelles. Speaking to local radio station Universo 970AM, Rolón said his office would collate the available information and evaluate it accordingly, stating that the economic crimes unit would intervene if it was determined to be a case of corruption. Reports began circulating in the local media on 20 July that Abdo Benítez and his wife, Silvana López Moreira, had two offshore bank accounts in their names holding over US$20m in the Seychelles. Abdo Benítez responded to the reports on social media on 21 July, saying it was “false information” and stating that “bank accounts in my name in the Seychelles do not exist and have never existed”. He said the reports were “a scandalous falsehood intended to damage my image”, noting they had been published by media belonging to Grupo Nación, which he said was owned by relatives of his predecessor as president, Horacio Cartes (2013-2018), the political mentor of current President Santiago Peña. Abdo Benítez, who hails from a rival faction in the ruling Asociación Nacional Republicana-Partido Colorado (ANR-PC), noted that Cartes had been sanctioned by the US for his involvement in “significant corruption”.
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