(CNN Spanish) –– Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Vice President of Argentina, was sentenced to 6 years in prison for the “Roads” case. However, she will not go to jail.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Vice President of the Nation. (Photo: Telam).
Fernández de Kirchner was found guilty of fraudulent administration and damage to the public administration during a period that spans his two presidencies (2007-2011 and 2011-2015), through the extraction of State funds for his personal benefit or that of a third party. . The court sentenced her to 6 years in prison.
Still, due to her role as vice president, Fernández de Kirchner has immunity, which protects her both legally and civilly in a criminal case, and she will not go to jail.
The Prosecutor’s Office accused the vice president of having led an illegal association to direct, together with other officials, million-dollar road works contracts that, according to the complaint, were incomplete, overpriced and even unnecessary.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner denied the charges during the trial and denounced that it is a political persecution. As previously stated, this accusation of corruption – the only one against the vice president that has reached the oral trial instance – is unfounded and is about persecution against her and the political project she represents.
A supporter of Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner sticks up a poster in front of the Comodoro Py courts, in Buenos Aires, on December 6, 2022. (Credit: Luis Robayo/AFP/Getty Images)
Fernández de Kirchner says she will not be a candidate
Following the news of her conviction, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner made public statements in which she assured that she would not run as a presidential candidate next year. The sentence does not prevent Fernández de Kirchner from being a candidate for the next elections.
The “Road” case
Prosecutor Diego Luciani, in charge of the “Vialidad” case, asked in august 12 years in prison for Fernández and perpetual disqualification from holding public office. The accusation specifically refers to 51 tenders in the province of Santa Cruz, where her deceased husband, former President Néstor Kirchner, was a native, and where both developed a good part of their professional and political careers before jumping into the national scene.
In this accusation there is another fundamental figure, that of Lázaro Báez, former partner of the Kirchner couple and whom the prosecutors point out as the main beneficiary of this alleged fraud. In other words, that he would have been favored by directing the works, and that later, in different ways, he would have financially benefited his alleged partners.
Prosecutor Luciani —who establishes the beginning of the alleged fraud in the government of Néstor Kirchner— affirms that, in order to divert funds, “overnight Lázaro Báez, a friend of the then president of the nation and business partner of him and his wife”.
Báez is already sentenced to 12 years in prison, handed down in 2021, on charges of money laundering between 2003 and 2015, and which has been appealed for his defense before the Chamber of Cassation. Regarding this conviction, his lawyer stated that it is the product of an alleged “political and media persecution.” In a dialogue with CNN, Báez’s defense denied the accusations, alleging that the evidence used to confirm the illicit association belongs to another file and that during the allegations it will demonstrate that the prosecution is lying in its arguments.