Probe Opened into Paraguay's Attorney General over Corruption

An investigation into Paraguay’s Attorney General Javier Díaz Verón has been ordered over illegal enrichment, local news reported Tuesday as other top officials face charges and arrest over corruption and Influence peddling. 

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Kattya Gonzalez, president of the Paraguayan Bar Association, confirmed the reports to EFE news agency and said that the investigation came as a response to a complaint her group had presented to the prosecutor's office in October.

She added that her organization's complaint was based on a series of newspaper articles on local media about properties and businesses belonging to Diaz Veron that could not be justified.

The country’s top prosecutor is currently on vacation in Mexico, and Gonzalez's bar association will publically call on him to resign in light of the recent investigation by the Paraguayan public ministry, the body which Veron himself heads. 

The news comes less than 10 days after opposition legislators called on the Paraguayan Congress to initiate legal impeachment proceedings in response to allegations of Veron's "unethical and outrageous behavior."

The investigation was opened by Federico Espinoza, a prosecutor that was appointed by Veron himself in 2014 to head the the public ministry’s anti-corruption unit.

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One of the latest allegations against Veron came as part of an audio recording featuring President Horacio Cartes' right-hand man Carmelo Caballero, and the former secretary of impeached Senator Oscar Gonzalez Daher, Raul Fernandez Lippmann.

In the recording, the Caballero and Lippmann, who oversee a congressional body that oversees judicial officials and appoints them, can be heard discussing "negotiations" to insert Veron into the new three-people candidate list for the position of attorney general again.

The prosecutor's office has already charged and requested house arrest for Senator Oscar Gonzalez Daher as well as former Interior Minister Caballero for charges of influence peddling.