Argentine Senator Edgardo Kueider was detained in Paraguay in the early hours of Wednesday with US$200,000 of undeclared cash while attempting to cross the International Friendship Bridge into Brazil. His detention has caused political uproar and sparked questions about his continuity in the House.

The senator for Entre Ríos was stopped for a routine check on the triple border between Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil. Oscar Orué, head of Paraguay’s National Directorate of Tax Revenues, said Kueider was unable to explain or provide evidence for why he had over US$200,000 and AR$600,000 (US$576 at the official dollar exchange rate) on hand. The sum is well over the limit for undeclared cash.

“He did not cooperate during the process, in the sense that he wouldn’t say what it was for, why he was bringing it, for what purpose. That will be determined in our internal inquiry,” Orué said in an interview with Radio 780 AM. He also explained that Kueider had not been taken to jail but was awaiting a summons at his hotel in the Paraguayan border city of Ciudad del Este.

Kueider was elected to the Senate in 2019 as a Peronist representative but has consistently voted with the ruling party La Libertad Avanza. He was one of two Peronist senators to vote in favor of President Javier Milei’s flagship Ley Bases law, earning condemnation from within the party.

“This is how votes are obtained for laws that harm the great majorities and the interests of the nation, or the absences that prevent the repeal of the Decrees of Necessity and Urgency that condemn millions of Argentines to poverty or allow the Minister of Economy to put the country back into debt,” wrote former president and vice president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in a post on X titled “Democracy at a price.” She currently leads the Partido Justicialista, Peronism’s largest party.

According to C5N, the national anti-laundering office PROCELAC has filed a case against Kueider in Argentina to investigate where the money came from and potentially prosecute him for smuggling or money laundering.