The one who was president of the country between 2007 and 2015 is tried for corruption. This is one of the multiple procedures in progress against that which benefits from immunity that only the Supreme Court could raise.
Le Monde with AFP
Twelve years in prison, as well as life ineligibility, were required on Monday, August 22, in Buenos Aires against the Argentinian vice-president Cristina Kirchner in a trial for corruption.
Cristina Kirchner, 69, was tried, in this distancing trial – and in her absence -, for illicit association and aggravated fraudulent administration, in a case of allocation of public contracts in her political stronghold of the province of Santa Cruz, in Patagonia (South), while she was head of the State (2007-2015).
Vice-president, and president of the Senate since 2019, she benefits at this stage from immunity, which only the Supreme Court could raise whether it came to confirm a possible conviction. Otherwise she could stand in the legislative and presidential elections at the end of 2023, even if she has not so far let her intentions filter.
After the requisitions on Monday, the Tour of the Defense pleadings will come in this procedure opened in 2019, but which had been suspended due to the Pandemic of Covid-19. They could stretch over several months and the court’s decision being pronounced until the end of 2022.
The prosecutor Diego Luciani, by requesting on Monday, “denounced an authentic system of institutional corruption”, the other representative of the public prosecutor Sergio Mola evoking “systematic irregularities in 51 calls of tenders out of twelve years”. p>
Five procedures still in progress
Sentences of two to twelve years in prison were required against the twelve co -accused, in particular 12 years against a businessman of the Lorenzo Baez building, already sentenced last year to 12 years in prison in a separate case of ‘Evasion of capital towards tax havens. The accusation estimated the damage caused to the State at 5.2 billion pesos (around 38 million euros) of which it requested confiscation.
Many times, the vice-president, who denies the facts, denounced a political persecution on the part of a justice, according to her, instrumentalized by the right opposition. Opposition and government in Argentina regularly refer the accusation of “Lawfare” (judicial war) and the instrumentalization of justice.
in a tweet Monday evening , Cristina Kirchner accused prosecutors of having “built their accusation on questions that had never been raised” in the initial act. She denounced a “peloton of media-judicial execution”, to which she said that she would respond on the merits Tuesday through social networks, after being refused on Monday the right to an additional deposition, “violation of principles defense “.
President Alberto Fernandez (center left) in a statement condemned the “legal and media persecution against the vice-president”, and estimated “that none of the acts attributed to the vice-president was proven”.
Clivant but still popular and icon of the Argentinian left, M Me Kirchner has been questioned in recent years in a dozen distinct files, with bribes, money laundering, fund Speculative damage caused to the State or hinders justice. It benefited from non-places, two recently at the end of 2021, but five procedures remain in progress.
risk of tense demonstrations
The probability of a condemnation of Cristina Kirchner has given rise, in recent days, to calls for mobilization emanating from politicians and peroneist movements, of which she remains the idol. These calls could announce tense demonstrations, in addition to those which every week in Buenos Aires are held against the cost of living and the flight of inflation.
Last week, an emblematic figure, although controversial, the co-founder of the Mother’s Movement (of the missing) of the May place, Hebe de Bonafini, called for a “popular uprising” in support of the vice-president. In parallel, a petition signed by more than 500 mayors denounces a trial aimed at blocking the road to M me kirchner of the policy of Argentina, where it remains a heavy goods vehicle on the left.