US imposes sanctions on Paraguayan cigarette producer for allegedly enriching the former president

ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay (AP) — The Biden administration on Tuesday imposed sanctions on a Paraguayan tobacco company for allegedly enriching the country's controversial former president, a cigarette tycoon sanctioned last year by the White House for corruption.

The U.S. Treasury Department said it was targeting cigarette producer Tabacalera del Este over its links to Horacio Cartes, one of the Paraguay’s richest men who served as president from 2013 to 2018 and still wields significant political power in the country. Paraguay's current president, Santiago Peña, is a political protégé of Cartes who also hails from the dominant conservative Colorado party.

Citing a “concerted pattern of corruption," the Treasury Department last year sanctioned Cartes over accusations that he had paid millions of dollars in bribes to lawmakers to pave his way to power and that he had cultivated ties to Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, which is believed to operate in the porous Triple Frontier where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet.

At the time, the Treasury also designated four companies controlled by Cartes that spanned the Paraguayan economy's main sectors, including cattle ranching, tobacco and consumer goods.