We introduce the notion of paraquaternionic contact structures (pqc structures), which turns out to be a generalization of the para 3-Sasakian geometry. We derive a distinguished linear connection preserving the pqc structure. Its torsion tensor is expressed explicitly in terms of the structure tensors and the structure equations of a pqc manifold are presented. We define pqc-Einstein manifolds and show that para 3-Sasakian spaces are precisely pqc manifolds, which are pqc-Einstein. Furthermore, we introduce the paraquaternionic Heisenberg qroup and show that it is the flat model of the pqc geometry.

28 pages, no figures, typos corrected