The former president of the Institute of Rural and Land Development (Indert), Ignacio Luis Ortigoza Samudio, has been sentenced to seven years in prison for the crime of breach of trust. The court found that in 2012, he authorized the irregular sale of 13 plots totaling 52,000 hectares in Mayor Pablo Lagerenza, in the department of Alto Paraguay, using a price of 30,000 guaranis per hectare, well below the official price of 109,500 guaranis. This caused a loss of 15.38 billion guaranis to the public institution.
The panel of judges, presided over by Lourdes Garcete and including Rossana Maldonado and Juan Ortiz, found Ortigoza guilty in a unanimous decision. The land allocation resolutions were signed in a concentrated manner on two dates, ignoring legitimate requests from occupants and benefiting individuals who did not meet the requirements for agrarian reform.
Despite the conviction, the court maintained the alternative measures to pre-trial detention already served by Ortigoza, as he had already been detained for a period longer than the legal minimum for the crime. He was also sentenced in December 2025 to three years and six months in prison for the immediate production of false public documents in another case of irregular land allocation.
Ortigoza remained a fugitive for six years until his capture in July 2025 during an operation against organized crime. He presided over Indert between 2012 and 2013, during the government of Federico Franco, and left the position after being accused in the irregular purchase of land in Cordillera, a case that involved the company San Agustín, linked to the then-president of Congress, Jorge Oviedo Matto.