Former PRF director tried to board in Asunción with a doctored document; plan included a stopover in Central America before the final destination in Nayib Bukele’s country
The escape plan of the former director general of the (PRF), , , had El Salvador as its final destination. According to investigations by Paraguayan authorities in cooperation with the Brazilian authorities, Silvinei intended to use a route with a stopover in Panama City to reach the Central American country, currently governed by .
The strategy to leave South America involved the use of an original Paraguayan passport, but with false data, inserted to hide the true identity of the former director, who appears on the international wanted list after his electronic ankle bracelet broke in .
Flagrant
The trip was interrupted at Silvio Pettirossi International Airport, in Asunción. When passing through migration control, agents identified inconsistencies in the document presented by Silvinei. Biometric verification confirmed that the data on the passport did not correspond to the holder, leading to his immediate arrest for using a false document.
Sources linked to the investigation point out that the choice of El Salvador as a refuge was not random. The former director’s defense, however, has not yet commented on the itinerary or detention in the neighboring country.
Conviction and breach of precautionary measures
The attempted evasion occurs ten days after the First Panel of the Federal Supreme Court () sentenced Silvinei Vasques to 24 years and 6 months in prison (on December 16, 2025) for crimes related to the attempted violent abolition of the Democratic Rule of Law. The sentence refers to the use of the PRF’s public machinery to carry out blitzes that hampered the movement of voters in the Northeast during the second round of the 2022 elections.
Silvinei, who had already been preventively arrested in August 2023 in Operation Citizen Constitution, responded to the process on provisional release using an electronic ankle bracelet. The rupture of the device this week triggered an Interpol red alert, allowing Paraguayan authorities to be notified in time to prevent the shipment to Panama.
Now, the former director remains detained in Asunción and is expected to be expelled from Paraguay in the next few hours, being handed over to the Federal Police at the border of Foz do Iguaçu (PR).
