CALLS are growing for the resignation of Paraguayan President Mario Abdo after a report showed that he entered discussions with Venezuelan usurper Juan Guaido to reduce debt repayments by Paraguay’s oil industry.

The opposition Guasu Front party demanded Mr Abdo’s resignation or impeachment following the revelation, saying on Tuesday that other parties should not be “accomplices in these new scandals of surrender, corruption and impunity.”

According to the report first published by the Washington Post last week, Paraguayan government officials entered secret discussions with Mr Guaido, the former president of Venezuela’s National Assembly who fronted countless Washington-backed attempts to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro.

It showed that Mr Guaido planned to steal some $40 million (£29m) of Venezuelan assets earmarked for humanitarian aid, along with state assets elsewhere in Latin America.

The assets included company shares, cars, houses and other properties owned by the Oil Company of Venezuela (PDVSA). The cash was needed to boost Mr Guaido’s flagging bid to oust Mr Maduro.

Contracts signed by Guaido associates included an agreement to halve the estimated $269m (£194m) debt owed by Paraguay to the PDVSA.

Under the terms of the agreement, Venezuela would renounce all “moratorium, compensatory, judicial and extrajudicial interests,” with a 50 per cent capital withdrawal leaving Paraguay’s debt at $133m (£96m).

Paraguayan parliamentarians highlighted other corruption scandals in Latin America, including secret negotiations held with Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro on the Itaipu hydroelectric dam. 

“This new scandal adds to their record of surrendering our sovereignty, corruption and impunity … Every time one of these new scandals breaks out, the president tries to ignore it,” a Guasu Front statement said.

“We call upon all other political forces with legislative representation not to be accomplices in these new scandals of surrender, corruption and impunity.”