Who Paid for the Dirty Campaign?

Folders, shared addresses and prepaid SIM cards can eventually form a map, ABC Color argues. In the map traced by the newspaper, the routes appear to lead toward Prana, an agency that reportedly emerged from the marketing department of Tabacos del Paraguay, a company belonging to Grupo Cartes.

Prana later developed into the communications operation that designed the digital strategy for the campaign that brought Santiago Peña to the presidency. In 2018, it publicly announced an alliance with Argentina’s Azafrán. Alejandra Duarte Albospino, then Prana’s digital director and now the Mitic communications vice minister, served as the visible representative of that partnership.

The article highlights the same office at O’Leary 966, the same circles and what it calls the same logic of operating at a distance. It says chats and audio recordings provided by Yecika Bracho, a Venezuelan who appeared as the registered holder of phone lines used by Despierta Paraguay, reveal how Azafrán allegedly ordered the urgent purchase of SIM cards, used nominees and ran attack advertisements.

According to the article, records and testimony indicate that Azafrán maintained a close operational relationship with Prana during key years. The report emphasizes the movement of the same people between the two agencies and presents the relationship as more than a coincidence. Its central question is who financed the alleged dirty campaign and whether the communications structure behind it remained connected to political power.