Impeached Paraguay leader charged over shock implosion of bank

ASUNCION, Paraguay: Paraguayan prosecutors charged ex-president Santiago Pena and took him into custody Saturday over a banking crisis that saw millions cut off from their money and sparked major protests.

Pena, Paraguay’s youngest-ever president, was removed from office by the Senate on Friday, just three days after the collapse of a leading bank with which he had business links.

He had offered to resign but lawmakers impeached him instead, thereby stripping him of the immunity he would have enjoyed had he stepped down.

In a fast-moving sequence of events, he was brought before prosecutors on Saturday and charged with “breach of trust and mismanagement for personal gain.”