The vice president of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez, was sentenced this Tuesday to 6 years in prison in a trial for irregularities in the concession of road works during the Kirchner governments (2003-2015).
When passing sentence in a trial that had begun in May 2019, the Federal Oral Court 2 also sentenced the former president to perpetual disqualification from holding public office.
However, despite the sentence, the journalist Patricia Janiot He pointed out that it will take years to know the judicial future of the current Argentine vice president since the decision must be ratified by two higher instances and the immunity that Fernández enjoys with his current position.
“Despite the sentence, it will take years before the judicial fate of the former Argentine president is known. The decision has to be ratified by two higher instances. In addition, in her capacity as vice president [Cristina Fernández de Kirchner] has immunity,” the journalist wrote on her networks.
Cristina against Justice: “Judicial mafia”
After knowing the sentence against her, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner spoke from the Senate of the Argentine Nation where she criticized the judicial arguments in which “the sentence was written” three years ago that the trial began.
“It is not a conviction by laws of the National Constitution and administrative, but rather it has its origin in a system that very naively on December 2, 2019 I called lawfare. I also spoke of the idea of a judicial party. Due to a youthful deformation, of a reader, to analyze. And it is much simpler: it is not a match. It is a parallel state and a mafia, judicial mafia“, he expressed.
court ruling
The judges found guilty Cristina Fernandez of the crime of fraudulent administration of public funds, but she was acquitted of the charges for alleged illicit association.
The penalty arranged for Fernández in the so-called “Cause Road” It is less than the 12-year prison term that the Prosecutor’s Office had requested last August in the final arguments of this process.
The oral court also ordered the confiscation of the effects of the crime, which consist of a sum of 84 835 million pesos (482 million dollars).
The 69-year-old former president, who in principle enjoys immunity until December 2023 due to her position in the Executive, has the right to appeal the sentence to higher courts.
The other defendants
In this process, irregularities were judged in the concession of 51 public works to firms of the businessman Lázaro Báez during the governments of the late Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and Cristina Fernández (2007-2015) in the southern province of Santa Cruz, the political cradle of the kirchnerism.
In addition to sentencing Cristina Fernández, the court also imposed a 6-year prison sentence for Lázaro Báez, the former Secretary of Public Works José López and the former head of the National Highway Directorate Nelson Periotti.
It also imposed various sentences of between 3 and a half and 5 years on the former heads of the National Road Administration in Santa Cruz Mauricio Collareda and Raúl Daruich, the former presidents of the Provincial Road Agency in Santa Cruz Raúl Pavesi and José Raúl Santibañez and Juan Carlos Villafañe , former mayor of the southern city of Río Gallegos and former president of Vialidad de Santa Cruz.
On the other hand, the court acquitted Julio De Vido, Minister of Federal Planning of Argentina between 2003 and 2015; Abel Fatala, former Undersecretary of Public Works of Argentina, and Héctor Garro, former president of the Provincial Road Agency in Santa Cruz.
The Cristina Fernandez case
In the case of Carlos Kirchnercousin of the former president Nestor Kirchner and former head of the Undersecretary for the Coordination of Federal Public Works, the judges acquitted him for the crime of illicit association and ordered his dismissal for breach of the duties of a public official, considering that this crime had prescribed.
The vice president, who in recent years has circumvented the requests for preventive detention issued against her in various cases -in many of which she was dismissed- thanks to the privileges that protect her, has always defended her innocence and has claimed to be the target of judicial and political harassment.
In its final stretch, the trial was shaken by the attack suffered by Cristina Fernández on September 1, when a man tried to shoot her at the doors of her home in Buenos Aires, while a group of followers demonstrated their support for the vice president in the Judicial process.
(With information from EFE)