Paraguayan President Mario Abdo Benítez signed a decree on Tuesday appointing René Fernández as the new Minister of the Secretariat for the Prevention of Money Laundering (Seprelad).
He replaces Carlos Arregui, the Paraguayan government’s civilian cabinet minister, Hernán Huttemann, announced at a press conference.
The replacement follows the report of the Latin American Financial Action Task Force (Gafilat) published the previous day, which rated the South American country as moderate in general but low in terms of combating money laundering.
In particular, the international organization’s assessment shows that while Paraguay has a legal system, the number of investigations, prosecutions, and convictions of cases related to money laundering is low.
In July this year, the South American country had avoided being included in the intergovernmental organization’s grey list by agreeing to the mutual evaluation, the text of which was only published on 5 September.
The Gafilat report suggests that Paraguay should prioritize the development of parallel financial investigations, facilitate the seizure of assets and strengthen cooperation between the Attorney General’s Office and the intelligence services.
Seprelad’s new Minister, René Fernández, had previously been head of the Secretariat for the Fight against Corruption (Senac), while lawyer Federico Hetter was appointed interim minister.
Former minister Carlos Arregui was appointed to the board of the Banco Nacional de Fomento (BNF).
Another change announced by the Paraguayan government was the transfer of the current Minister of the Presidential Administration (UGP), Carmen Marín, to the Paraguayan Central Bank (BCP) board, which still has to be approved by the Paraguayan Congress.