The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice unblocked on Wednesday, June 11, the case against former Interior Minister Rafael Filizzola, accused of causing a financial loss of G. 1,131,812,500 to the Paraguayan state due to alleged breach of trust. The court ordered that case number 105/2013 be immediately sent to the Court of Appeals, First Chamber of the Capital, to be reassigned to its natural sitting members.
The ruling ends a prolonged composition dispute that had stalled the case for over a decade. The deadlock worsened after Filizzola’s defense rejected appellate judges José Agustín Fernández and Bibiana Benítez, combined with the removal of magistrate Camilo Torres, the retirement of appellate judge Delio Vera Navarro, and the subsequent acceptance of judge Paublino Escobar to join the appellate court. Although the computerized system had even drawn judge Adriana María Giagni as a replacement for Fernández, the judge opposed taking on the case, arguing that keeping the case under a provisional composition due to a “merely bureaucratic system issue” would violate the constitutional principle of the natural judge, since the Court had already appointed two new permanent members for that chamber.
Ministers Manuel Dejesús Ramírez Candia, María Carolina Llanes, and Víctor Ríos Ojeda concluded that there was no real jurisdictional dispute, as no judge had formally declared themselves incompetent. Nevertheless, they deemed it essential to forward the case so that the court’s natural members could resolve the pending appeals, ensuring due process rules.
The Court’s intervention responds to urgent demands from the Public Prosecutor’s Office. On May 22, prosecutor Silvia González submitted a petition urging the Criminal Chamber to resolve the situation of the appellate judges, warning about the excessive delay of a case that has been wandering through judicial corridors for more than ten years.
The accusation holds that Filizzola ordered, within less than 22 days, a disbursement of millions in public funds in favor of the company Todo Verde Emprendimientos for the renovation and construction of bathrooms in 23 police stations in the Metropolitan Area. According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office’s hypothesis, the promised works were never completed and, in many cases, were never even started.
The core of the legal battle revolves around the statute of limitations for the criminal action. The Public Prosecutor’s Office seeks to overturn the decision of criminal guarantees judge Yoan Paul López, who on May 6, 2025, declared the case time-barred at a preliminary hearing and ordered the definitive dismissal of the former minister, citing alleged prosecutorial negligence. Prosecutor González strongly objects to this ruling, arguing that judge López ignored that a Court of Appeals had previously ruled against the statute of limitations and warned that the delay in the case is solely due to the defense’s constant procedural tactics, demanding that the Court count the “dead periods” to formally reactivate the trial.