Paraguay's Chamber of Deputies is under pressure to vote, by Thursday, on a bill intended to dismantle the so-called 'Promissory Note Mafia' – a scheme of alleged criminal association that uses original collection documents in multiple courts simultaneously, allowing the same debt to be collected up to four times.
The bill, which has been pending for weeks without analysis, establishes that promissory notes and other original credit instruments be deposited in the courts from the start of the process and returned to the debtor after payment, preventing further executions. The proposal was drafted jointly with the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) and modifies articles of the Civil Procedure Code (Law No. 1,337/1988).
In the version approved by the Senate, only physical documents are covered. The Lower Chamber, however, included – with the endorsement of Court ministers Eugenio Jiménez and Alberto Martínez Simón, president of the CSJ – the figure of 'electronic promissory notes,' a mechanism the Court considers a trend for the coming years. If the Chamber does not ratify its modifications by absolute majority (41 votes), automatic sanction will enforce the Senate text, without the digital provision.
The scenario is uncertain: in recent months, the Chamber has faced difficulties forming a quorum, and several sessions have ended without deliberation. Although sectors of the Cartismo movement have shown empathy for the nearly 17,000 victims of the scheme, the bill risks being approved by inertia, without the in-depth debate the complexity of the topic requires.
Meanwhile, an impeachment request against the nine Court ministers, filed for alleged 'complicit inaction,' remains shelved in the Chamber, with no deputy having taken on the rapporteur role.