Ybyra Pyta y Mandarinas, Barrio Santa Teresa, Hernandarias, 7220, Alto Parana, Paraguay
Reg. ID
80008790-9, Tax ID No.
Official reason
Today, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated Paraguayan tobacco company Tabacalera del Este S.A. (Tabesa) for providing financial support to Paraguay’s former president, Horacio Manuel Cartes Jara (Cartes), who OFAC sanctioned on January 26, 2023 for his involvement in corruption. Tabesa is being designated pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13818, which builds upon and implements the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act and targets perpetrators of serious human rights abuse and corruption around the world.
OFAC previously identified Tabesa on OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) List as an entity in which Cartes owned, directly or indirectly, a 50 percent or greater interest. While Cartes no longer owns Tabesa following a sales agreement to acquire Cartes’s shares in the company, Tabesa has made—and plans to continue making—payments worth millions of dollars to Cartes, despite Cartes’s designation by OFAC.
Tabesa is being designated for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of Cartes, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to E.O. 13818. Note that licensed activities related to Tabesa pursuant to General License 7 under the Global Magnitsky Sanctions Regulations continue to be authorized.
On December 23, 2016, the President signed the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (Pub. L. 114-328, Title XII, Subtitle F) (the “Act”) into law. The Act authorized the President to impose targeted sanctions on any foreign person the President determines is, among other things, responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, or a government official, or a senior associate of such an official, responsible for, or complicit in, ordering, controlling, or otherwise directing, acts of significant corruption.
On December 20, 2017, the President, invoking the authority of, inter alia, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701-1706) (IEEPA), issued Executive Order 13818 (82 FR 60839, December 26, 2017) (E.O. 13818), effective at 12:01 a.m. eastern standard time on December 21, 2017.
In E.O. 13818, the President determined that serious human rights abuse and corruption around the world constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States and declared a national emergency to deal with that threat.
OFAC is issuing the Global Magnitsky Sanctions Regulations, 31 CFR part 583 (the “Regulations”), to implement the Act and E.O. 13818, pursuant to authorities delegated to the Secretary of the Treasury in E.O. 13818. A copy of E.O. 13818 appears in appendix A to this part.
