Jailed Millennial Banker’s Unicorn Dream Topples Paraguay Leader

(Bloomberg) — Miguel Vázquez, a millennial triathlete who owned one of Paraguay’s largest banks, dreamed of creating his country’s first unicorn and being the first to list a local company on the New York Stock Exchange. 

Instead, Vázquez was jailed this week as Paraguay’s central bank shut down the lender, Ueno Bank SA, citing liquidity concerns. 

Ueno’s fall didn’t just take down Vázquez. By Thursday, Paraguayan President Santiago Peña had resigned under the threat of impeachment because of his close connections to the fallen lender, both as an investor and as leader of an administration that deposited more than $800 million, a record amount, with the now-shuttered bank. 

Now, millions of Paraguayans and the state are unable to access their money stashed in Ueno, a bank that was valued at nearly $500 million earlier this year. Vázquez’s stake alone was worth as much as $375 million, which likely made him one of the richest people in one of Latin America’s poorest nations before Ueno’s collapse. 

Peña directly addressed Ueno’s crisis in a resignation video posted on social media. 

“I have just one priority: the tranquility of Paraguayans that trusted their savings to our financial system,” Peña said. “Behind every deposit there are years of effort, sacrifice and family projects. My biggest wish is to guarantee the return of those resources.” 

The arrest and shutdown mark a stunning reversal for Vázquez, 36, who converted a non-bank lender into a ubiquitous bank used by two-thirds of Paraguayans. Ueno even sponsored the national soccer team, which electrified the nation when it knocked Germany out of the World Cup earlier this year, prompting a national holiday. 

An only child, Vázquez had managed to multiply his family’s wealth before Ueno’s meltdown. His maternal grandfather owned Mercedes Benz’s local dealership, while his paternal grandmother sold groceries at a market stand. His father created a micro-lending business based at the market stand, aimed at people who were shut out of the banking system. 

“What I am, more than an entrepreneur, is that I am the third generation, I’m an heir building on the shoulder of two giants,” Vázquez said in a 2024 interview. 

Vázquez took his father’s small lender, known as Credicentro, and converted it into Ueno Bank in 2023. Hungary’s OTP Bank Plc increased its stake in Ueno’s holding company earlier this year to 10%, valuing it at $470 million as recently as June. 

Vázquez is also the majority owner of Grupo Vázquez, a holding company that included Ueno as well as assets devoted to everything from cattle ranching to e-commerce. It employed 6,000 people and had revenues of over $100 million in 2025, according to its annual report, and its holdings more than tripled since 2020 to 28 at the end of last year.

Victor Dante Gulino, a lawyer for Vázquez, didn’t respond to requests for comment from Bloomberg but told local media that he didn’t know what exactly Vázquez was accused of. He will remain in pre-trial detention, local outlet ABC reported on Thursday.

Ueno’s headquarters in Asuncion were known as “The Matrix,” designed to look like a Google office, according to a person who visited the place, who asked not to be named for because their discussions there were private. It was outfitted with glass walls, glossy wood, hanging plants and indigenous art. Meeting rooms had chess boards, while private chefs and butlers served lunch to the executives in their wing of the building.

Vázquez has said he competes in Ironman competitions, races cars and likes to compare his business strategy with racing. “I love speed, I love racing,” he said on Ueno’s website. A person who knows him said he also collects luxury sports cars. 

Vázquez’s relationship with Peña, Paraguay’s president since 2023, drew particular scrutiny and led the house to begin impeachment proceedings on Thursday. Peña resigned as lawmakers debated what to do but before they had voted on his ouster.  

Peña invested between 2019 and 2025 in one of Vázquez’s companies, but not directly in Ueno Bank. His office didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

While president, Peña had defended Ueno bank and his government’s decision to deposit money in it, saying it rewarded savers with high interest rates. “We are protecting the savings of depositors,” he said in late 2024, adding that criticisms about potential conflicts of interest were part of a “lying, petty media campaign.” 

Ueno obtained its banking license less than three years ago, shortly after Peña became president. Central bank chief Carlos Carvallo, who authorized the license, used to work for Vázquez as head of the entity that eventually became Ueno. Carvallo also resigned this week, shortly after shutting down Ueno, a bank whose name is a pun on the Spanish word for “good.” 

Government deposits in Ueno grew quickly from less than $100 million in January 2024, to accounting for about 20% of all state savings deposited in the banking system at the end of September, including hundreds of millions of dollars from Paraguay’s social security agency. 

It’s unclear what will happen to those funds after the bank’s shutdown. Paraguay’s deposit insurance guarantees savings up to $38,000. 

Vázquez began working for the family businesses very early on, helping his father close loans for Credicentro when he was still a teenager. 

He started university at a private college in Asuncion but said in the 2024 interview that he never graduated and had gotten into a fight with a professor who was defending employee rights in Paraguay. “I told the teacher that employees have responsibilities too, not just the employer, because otherwise you are just creating leftists,” he said. 

He said he later studied finance at Incae, a Costa Rican business school, but hadn’t obtained a degree. Vázquez took over as head of the family business in 2014, according to his LinkedIn profile, which he used in recent months to repost statements defending Ueno’s financial resilience.  

Ueno made headlines in 2025 when it sponsored Paraguay’s soccer team. It had also offered accounts to team members, who said this week that they too had been shut out of their savings, according to a statement attributed to players and posted by Gustavo Gomez, who has played as captain of Paraguay’s national team, and is also currently captain of Brazil’s Palmeiras. 

“We were victims of this situation, the same as many Paraguayan families, we share the same indignation,” the post said. “Our absolute priority should be the working people, those who had their life savings invested there.”

–With assistance from Ignacio Olivera Doll, Patrick Gillespie and Ken Parks.

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