LatinNews Daily - 13 October 2025

Paraguay: On 6 October the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) announced that Paraguay’s former president Horacio Cartes (2013-2018), who serves as party president of the ruling Asociación Nacional Republicana-Partido Colorado (ANR-PC), had been removed from Ofac’s Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list. Cartes had been added to the list in January 2023 by the previous US administration led by former president Joe Biden (2021-2025). The previous year he had been blacklisted by the US Department of State for “involvement in significant corruption”. In a written statement released to news agency Reuters on 6 October, a US Department of State spokesperson said that “sanctions on Cartes and his related businesses were no longer required to incentivize changes in behavior and were therefore not in the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States.” The US’ decision has been blasted by opposition legislators in Paraguay. A social media post by Senator Esperanza Martínez, of Partido Participación Ciudadana, described the news as the product of a “surrendering and shameful foreign policy”, while Senator Rafael Filizzola of the Partido Democrático Progresista accused the government led by President Santiago Peña of having “acted like lackeys”, and “following to the letter what was dictated to them from the US”, over the past few months. While neither post makes reference to any specific government policy, collaboration between the Peña government and the US has been evident in recent months, including the signing of a Safe Third Country Agreement on 14 August.

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