This hearing comes amid a banking crisis triggered on Tuesday. An online bank was then placed under receivership for insolvency, a measure that froze the deposits of nearly three million people.
The public timeline is tight. The receivership and the freeze on deposits date from Tuesday; the investigation against Santiago Peña was opened on Thursday; the deposition took place on Saturday.
The suspicions set out in the proceedings concern personal use of office, through breach of trust, influence peddling and fraudulent management. The available information does not detail the questions asked during the hearing.
In this climate, television showed three vans leaving the presidential residence. The convoy departed amid insults and eggs being thrown.
The intervention of the BCP is at the origin of this freeze. The number of customers affected matches the figure claimed by Ueno.
Ueno claimed to have nearly three million customers, or nearly half the country’s population. The freeze on assets thus goes beyond an isolated incident and places a major share of savers at the center of the crisis.
Santiago Peña gave a deposition on Saturday in the investigation opened against him on Thursday, according to AFP. The proceedings target suspicions of breach of trust, influence peddling and fraudulent management for personal ends.