Carlos Carvallo

Introduction

Carlos Carvallo is Paraguay’s former central bank president — a financier who ran the finance company that became Ueno Bank before President Santiago Peña appointed him to head the central bank in 2023, the same regulator charged with supervising the lender he once led. When Ueno collapsed in early November 2026 and locked millions of Paraguayans out of their savings, Carvallo resigned on November 3 at the president’s request; three days later, on November 6, prosecutors ordered his arrest alongside Peña as part of a criminal investigation into the collapse .

Background Information

Carvallo headed Financiera Ueno, the bank’s predecessor institution, before Peña named him president of Paraguay’s central bank in 2023. The appointment meant the man who built the lender was now the state regulator overseeing it — a conflict the impeachment case against Peña would later cite directly, alongside Peña’s own stake in Ueno’s holding company, which he divested under pressure in 2025. Lawmakers also accuse Peña of letting the state pension fund deposit $355 million at the bank, beyond legal limits; Ueno’s expansion was fueled by more than $800 million in public money and signed up more than two-thirds of the country’s adults, including over a million Paraguayans opening their first bank account .

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Resigned; arrest ordered. Carvallo has not been convicted; the arrest order came as part of a criminal investigation, and his custody status was initially unclear.

When regulators intervened in Ueno in early November 2026 — finding the digital lender’s solvency had fallen below half the required minimum, freezing the accounts used by nearly half the country’s six million people — Carvallo resigned as central bank president on Tuesday, November 3, at Peña’s request, amid criticism of the regulator’s supervision of the bank it had allowed to grow on public deposits. Peña’s government fell within days: the Chamber of Deputies advanced impeachment, Peña resigned Thursday only for Congress to press ahead with the trial anyway, and on Friday the Senate removed him in a 44-0 vote — the second Paraguayan president ousted by impeachment since the end of the Stroessner dictatorship .

The same Friday, Paraguayan prosecutors ordered the arrest of Peña and former central bank chief Carvallo as part of a criminal investigation into alleged breach of trust and other offenses tied to the Ueno collapse. Peña, charged with suspicion of breach of trust and influence peddling among other offenses, was placed under house arrest and questioned Saturday; NBC News reported it was not immediately clear whether Carvallo had been taken into custody. Vice President Pedro Alliana — himself under investigation in connection with the bank — was sworn in to serve the term ending in August 2028 .

Public Reaction and Consequences

Public fury concentrated on the frozen savings: as senators deliberated, protesters marched through downtown Asunción chanting “Santi Peña to Tacumbú!” — the capital’s main prison where Ueno’s founder and former CEO, Miguel Vázquez, was already being held. In the separate case against Ueno’s executives, prosecutors charged 27 people with crimes including breach of trust and attempted fraud; a judge ordered six former directors, Vázquez among them, into pretrial detention and confined two others to their homes with electronic monitors. Deposits are insured up to about $35,000, covering 97% of Ueno’s customers, and the central bank Carvallo once led spent the crisis week working to compensate the account holders its former president had supervised the bank to insolvency .

Current Status

Carvallo has resigned the central bank presidency, is named in a prosecutors’ arrest order tied to the breach-of-trust investigation into the Ueno collapse, and — as of the immediate post-order coverage — his arrest had not been confirmed as executed. The criminal investigation, the 27-defendant case against Ueno’s executives, and the political fallout including Peña’s removal and house arrest are all ongoing. No conviction has been entered against Carvallo, and no trial date has been reported .

Impact on Their Career/Life

Carvallo’s arc — from building the country’s fastest-growing digital lender to regulating it to answering for its collapse — compressed the Ueno crisis’s central conflict of interest into a single career, and it ended with a prosecutor’s arrest order three days after the presidency he held demanded his resignation. The bank he built survives in the name of the scandal: millions locked out of savings, the country’s worst political crisis in more than a decade, a president ousted and confined, and a central bank now paying back the depositors it failed .

Sources

• NBC News, “Ousted Paraguayan president placed under house arrest after bank collapse,” November 6, 2026 — source
• AP via Yahoo News, “Paraguay’s former president faces prosecutors after his removal over bank collapse,” November 7, 2026 — source
• Latin Times, “President Resigns and Congress Impeaches Him After 60% of…,” November 2026 — source
• India Today, “Bank collapse leaves half of Paraguay without funds, economist-president under house arrest,” November 7, 2026 — source