A resident of the Cañada del Ybyray neighborhood in Asunción has reported that her home was demolished as part of an eviction process she considers irregular. Silvana Vega, who has lived there for more than 20 years, says she had already begun land regularization procedures but was forcibly removed. The case reignites suspicions about an alleged irregular sale scheme of municipal land that, according to city officials, remains active even after the intervention led by Carlos Pereira.
According to accounts from employees across different departments of the Municipality of Asunción, the scheme targets high-value real estate areas such as Mburucuyá, Las Lomas, and Molas López. The method, described by internal sources, involves identifying plots occupied by low-income families, followed by 24-hour notices to present documents under threat of eviction. Faced with the impossibility of regularizing their situation, the occupants are pressured to "sell" their rights to wealthy buyers acting through front men.
Municipal employees allegedly worked to "skip" mandatory administrative steps, especially review by the Social Area, which verifies the occupants' situation. The process would go directly from the Cadastre Department to the Legal Advisory Office, which would issue a favorable opinion, and then to the Municipal Board for final approval. In many cases, those involved supposedly split the proceeds, creating a "parallel revenue stream."
At the latest Municipal Board session, which lacked a quorum due to the absence of most councilors, a vote was scheduled on an opinion from the Finance and Budget Committee that would authorize a "deed of transfer of ownership" for a plot in the Santísima Trinidad district, in the Cañada del Ybyray neighborhood. Vega's lawyer, Florencio Gómez, submitted a document to the Board alleging that his client never signed the transfer of rights to the property. The filing also points to an alleged "deliberate" and "malicious" withholding of Vega's case in the Cadastre Department, which was reportedly kept "under lock and key" with access denied.
Vega said that Cadastre employees asked for bribes starting at G. 100,000 to speed up her process. "If you don't put money in, it gets stuck. My file had already been started before. When they look at my case, they clearly see that I kept it moving every year, but it never reached the Board because I don't have the financial means to push it through, and because bureaucracy is slow when you have no money," she stated.
A Municipal Board authority, who requested anonymity, pointed to irregularities in the process, such as an error in the neighborhood description and an undervalued plot price—between G. 50 and G. 60 million, considered low for the area. The director of Legal Affairs, Jorge Sabaté, said his office issued a favorable opinion for the sale at market value but did not comment on the absence of Vega's signature. Former Legal Advisory Office director Benito Torres denied the office's involvement in illegal sales.