Paraguay ministry forwards 'dirty campaign' complaints amid lawyer's procedural objections

Paraguay's Public Ministry, under Emiliano Rolón, has forwarded complaints concerning an alleged government "dirty communication campaign" to the Comptroller General's Republic (CGR). However, the lawyers representing the complainant have raised serious objections, citing seven procedural "problems" and asserting that the move aims to "close the case with institutional decoration."

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the problems identified can be grouped into three levels.

The original complaint was filed by Hugo Javier Portillo Sosa, represented by lawyers Cecilia Pérez and Ezequiel Santagada. It targets officials from the Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies (Mitic) and other institutions for the alleged "Desinformante Network" campaign, which they claim used public funds for digital harassment. The complaint detailed a supposed scheme to channel money from social programs like "Hambre Cero" and "Che Róga Porã" to fund attacks, allegedly linked through the Colombian agency Digimarketing SAS to official government advertising.

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unresolvable internal contradiction

Lawyer Cecilia Pérez outlined three main issues with the Public Ministry's referral to the CGR. Firstly, she pointed to an "unresolvable internal contradiction": if a fiscal file is open, as suggested by the mention of an assistant prosecutor and an entry number, the case should have an assigned prosecutor and be formally communicated to a judge. The absence of such communication, she argued, violates procedural law. If no file is open, the referral to the CGR lacks any procedural connection to the criminal justice system.

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the closing of the case with institutional decoration.

Secondly, Pérez identified a "methodological error" in applying legal standards for sufficient factual evidence. She claims the threshold was applied with undue rigor, overlooking objective, publicly available evidence from digital transparency records. The "third level" of concern involves omissions with irreversible consequences, particularly the failure to adopt urgent preservation measures for evidence in a situation described as potentially involving significant public funds and digital manipulation.

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methodological error in the application of the standard of article 285 CPP