The Attorney General of the State, Emiliano Rolón Fernández, forwarded to the Comptroller General's Office (CGR) the complaints related to the so-called government "dirty communication" campaign under Santiago Peña's administration, in the episode known as "La Red Desinformante" — an alleged scheme that reportedly diverted public funds from social programs to finance digital harassment campaigns against opponents. The referral, however, drew sharp criticism from lawyer Cecilia Pérez, legal representative of complainant Hugo Javier Portillo Sosa, who identified seven flaws in the procedure and stated that the decision seeks only "to close the case with institutional decoration."
The criminal complaint had been filed before the Specialized Unit for Economic Crimes and Anti-Corruption of the Public Prosecutor's Office against officials from the Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies (Mitic) and other institutions. The case pointed to an alleged scheme of triangulating public funds, originally intended for social programs such as "Hambre Cero," "Che Róga Porã," and the "Plan SUMAR," to finance digital harassment campaigns. Journalistic investigations had linked the Colombian agency Digimarketing SAS as the common thread between the official advertising for these programs and the digital attack page "Despierta Paraguay."
Cecilia Pérez, also assisted by lawyer Ezequiel Santagada, classified the flaws found at three levels. The first would be an "insurmountable internal contradiction": if there is an open case file — as suggested by the mention of deputy prosecutor Soledad Machuca and entry number 5956 — the case should have an assigned prosecutor, a formal case number, and notification to the guarantor judge. "The absence of this notification would violate Article 302 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. If there is no open file, the referral to the CGR lacks any procedural connection to the criminal justice system," the former minister stated.
At the second level, Pérez pointed to a methodological error in applying the standard of Article 285 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, arguing that the threshold of "sufficient factual evidence" was demanded with an improper rigor for the merit analysis stage, ignoring objective public evidence contained in digital platform transparency records. The third level would be one of omission with irreversible consequences, given the failure to adopt urgent preservation measures in a context of systematic destruction of evidence. "This allowed the destruction of evidence that can no longer be recovered," she said.
The lawyer insisted that the referral to the Comptroller General's Office does not constitute a procedural solution, but rather a disguised closure of the case. The CGR, an administrative oversight body, can audit contracts and investigate management irregularities, but does not have the necessary authority to preserve digital evidence in real time or to conduct a criminal investigation. "For that, only a prosecutor with an open investigation and a guarantor judge who authorizes the corresponding precautionary measures will serve," she concluded.
The document submitted by the defense also questions the alleged disparity in treatment by the Public Prosecutor's Office compared to other cases. According to Pérez and Santagada, the complaint against former IPS president Jorge Brítez, for alleged irregularities, received considerable speed, despite having been filed one week after Portillo's complaint. "This contrast is not merely anecdotal: it is legally relevant because equality in the application of criminal procedural law is a constitutional guarantee. If the Public Prosecutor's Office applies different standards of urgency and merit to formally similar cases — complaints of misappropriation of public funds — depending on who the accused is, this constitutes a procedural arbitrariness that can be challenged," they emphasized.
So far, the Public Prosecutor's Office and the CGR have not publicly responded to the criticisms presented by the complainant's defense.