Argentina: Pleadings begin in trial against vice president Cristina Kirchner

On Monday, August 1, the Prosecutor’s Office said that the former president and current vice president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández Kirchner (2007-2015), and her late husband, the former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007), created “one of the most extraordinary matrices of corruption” during their mandates, in the pleadings phase of the trial that puts her in the dock for alleged irregularities in the awarding of public works when she was president.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office “is convinced that between 2003 and 2015 there was an illicit association that had at the top of its operation those who were heads of state,” said prosecutor Diego Luciani, considering that the alleged offenses began in the previous government of Kirchner, husband of the former president and deceased in 2010.

In this case, in which 12 others are involved, it is being investigated if there was a direction in the awarding of public works in the southern province of Santa Cruz, the political cradle of the Kirchners, granted to businessman Lázaro Báez, and also if there were overpricing.

According to the prosecutor, “there was an agreement to maintain a staging among all those involved” for the execution of the works, which, he assured, generated “immeasurable losses for the State” and “are still unfinished”.

However, an audit carried out at the request of the courts by Vialidad Nacional, an entity attached to the Ministry of Public Works, determined that the works were completed.

The Financial Information Unit had considered it “irresponsible to move forward with an accusation” by dismissing the arguments of the prosecution on the existence of the crimes of fraudulent administration and illicit association.

The Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, chief of staff in the Kirchner government, testified in the case last February and supported the vice president by affirming that “there was never an arbitrary distribution of funds”.

The prosecution will present its arguments in nine hearings scheduled for the next three weeks, and then it will be the defense’s turn.

The trial began on May 21, 2019, had over 100 witnesses, and had to be temporarily suspended in 2020 due to the covid-19 pandemic.

If convicted, Kirchner will be politically disqualified.

The 69-year-old vice-president was acquitted in several cases for alleged crimes during her two presidential terms (2007-2015) but still faces five trials.

Last October, a case in which the former president was accused of covering up for those responsible for the 1994 bombing of the Jewish mutual AMIA in Buenos Aires, which left 85 dead and 300 wounded, was dismissed.

With information from BBCL