The Public Prosecutor’s Office is seeking 12 years in prison for Hernán Rivas, accusing him of producing and using public documents containing false information to present himself as a lawyer and join the Jurado de Enjuiciamiento de Magistrados (JEM), a Paraguayan body that tries and can remove judges, prosecutors and public defenders. The prosecution says warnings about his lack of legal training arose before his appointments but were ignored by political allies.
In their closing arguments, prosecutors Patricia Sánchez, Christian Benítez and Luz Guerrero said the case was “especially serious.” The prosecution says Rivas used the documents before the Ministry of Education and Sciences (MEC), the Supreme Court of Justice and both chambers of Congress. The Public Prosecutor’s Office also says he went on to preside over the JEM and serve as the body’s spending authorizer and official responsible for budget execution—characterizations made by the prosecution that remain subject to the court’s judgment.
The elements highlighted by the prosecutors include the registration of the degree with the MEC in just over four hours, his lack of technical command of legal language and the repeated use of the documents. The prosecution maintains that Rivas used his political position to obtain expedited procedures and create an appearance of professional suitability. The requested sentence is 12 years, within a framework that, with aggravating circumstances provided for in the Criminal Code in especially serious cases, can reach 15 years.
The warnings were already public in 2023. In an interview published by ABC Color, dissident Colorado Party congressman Roberto González recalled that he considered the MEC’s validation of the degree untenable and said Rivas’s lack of technical language was obvious. González also identified former President Horacio Cartes, leader of the Honor Colorado movement, as the main political mentor of the then-legislator. This political assessment is not a judicial conclusion.
Senator Silvio “Beto” Ovelar said he personally asked about ten times whether Rivas was a lawyer and received affirmative answers. When doubts arose, lawmakers asked him to produce documents and former university classmates, but, according to Ovelar, that did not happen. The senator said he would publicly acknowledge the error and apologize if there is a conviction: “I would be the first one deceived.”
Senator Celeste Amarilla, of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA), questioned how Rivas’s allies failed to notice his limitations, arguing that he “could neither speak nor read” with the fluency expected of someone with a law degree. She also warned that witnesses who lied at the trial could face perjury charges.
Amarilla also warned of possible actions seeking to invalidate or declare unconstitutional resolutions and decisions made by the JEM during the period when Rivas was a member of or presided over the body. The consequence would depend on the courts’ analysis of each case, and the senator’s statement does not mean that all the decisions are automatically annulled.
During the trial, Patricia Sánchez said she received, through a third party, a threat attributed to Rivas concerning her remaining in office. “The threat concerned the position, saying that I would be removed,” the prosecutor said, clarifying that there was no death threat. She reported the episode to Attorney General Emiliano Rolón Fernández but said she did not know how the message reached the intermediary. The account of the threat was not presented in the sources as independent evidence.
The case also revived an accusation against Gerardo Benítez Stewart. Lawyer Federico Campos López Moreira is challenging a law degree attributed to Universidad Interamericana in 2011: according to his allegation, the faculty was created in 2010, although the documents indicate studies between 2007 and 2009. The Supreme Court ordered a preliminary investigation in October 2023, and the criminal inquiry still has no definitive conclusion.