The United States has removed former Paraguayan president Horacio Cartes from its sanctions list, a shift that comes amid warmer ties between the Trump administration and President Santiago Peña’s conservative government, Bloomberg reported.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control delisted Cartes and several companies tied to him from its Specially Designated Nationals list. Cartes, a businessman who led Paraguay from 2013 to 2018, had been barred from entering the U.S. in 2022 under the Biden administration over alleged corruption and was later cut off, along with at least five of his firms, from the U.S. banking system.
The measures did not prevent Cartes from becoming chairman of the ruling Colorado Party or from backing his protégé, Peña, who won the presidency in 2023. Peña has cultivated close relations with Washington, calling Donald Trump’s foreign policy team led by Marco Rubio a “dream come true,” the news outlet said.
Cartes thanked the Trump administration for what he called “objectivity and a sense of justice” in lifting the sanctions, saying in a statement on X that he hoped to help strengthen the “historic friendship” between Paraguay and the United States, according to the report.
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