In Argentina, twelve years in prison required against Vice-President Cristina Kirchner

Twelve years in prison, as well as life ineligibility, were requested on Monday, August 22, in Buenos Aires against Argentinian Vice-President Cristina Kirchner in a corruption trial.

Cristina Kirchner, 69, was tried, in this remote trial, for aggravated illicit association and fraudulent administration, in a case of awarding public contracts in her political stronghold in the province of Santa Cruz, in Patagonia (south), then that she was Head of State (2007-2015). Twelve co-accused were tried alongside him.

Vice-President and President of the Senate since 2019, she benefits at this stage from immunity, which only the Supreme Court could lift if it were to confirm a possible conviction.

After the requisitions on Monday, it will be the turn of the defense pleadings in this procedure opened in 2019, but which had been suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic. They could stretch over several months and the court’s decision will not be pronounced until the end of 2022.

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Prosecutor Diego Luciani, by petitioning on Monday, “denounced an authentic system of institutional corruption”the other representative of the Public Prosecutor’s Office Sergio Mola referring to “systematic irregularities in 51 tenders over twelve years”.

Five proceedings still in progress

On many occasions, the vice-president, who denies the facts, has denounced a political persecution on the part of a justice, according to her, instrumentalized by the right-wing opposition. Opposition and government in Argentina regularly refer to each other the accusation of “lawfare” (judicial war) and instrumentalization of justice.

As soon as the requisitions were known, the president (center left) Alberto Fernandez condemned the “legal and media persecution against the vice-president”and estimated “that none of the acts attributed to the vice-president have been proven”.

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Divisive but still popular and an icon of the Argentinian left, Mme Kirchner has been implicated in recent years in a dozen separate cases, between bribes, money laundering, speculative damage caused to the State or obstruction of justice. She benefited from dismissals, two recently at the end of 2021, but five procedures remain in progress.

The World with AFP

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