The Argentine government supports Cristina Kirchner for the Roads 1:35 cause
(CNN Spanish) – The public prosecutor’s office accuses Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of having led an association for state fraud as president between 2007 and 2015 by allegedly directing millions of euros for road works in the province of Santa Cruz.
In August, prosecutor Diego Luciani, in charge of the case known as “Vialidad,” asked for Fernández to be sentenced to 12 years in prison and permanently barred from public office. A possible conviction would not prevent Fernández de Kirchner from running in the next elections.
The verdict is expected to be available this Tuesday. Because of her position as vice president, Fernández de Kirchner enjoys immunity that protects her both legally and civilly in criminal proceedings, and she will not go to jail if convicted.
The ex-president also assures that this corruption allegation – the only one against the vice-president that has reached the hearing – has no basis and that it is a persecution against her and the political project she represents. In his words, he asserts that he is “not before a constitutional court, but before a media court firing squad” and that the verdict against him has already been written.
What do you accuse Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of?
During his two presidencies (2007-2011 and 2011-2015), Fernández is accused of running an illegal association to defraud public administration by siphoning funds from the state for his personal benefit or that of a third party.
Prosecutors say he, along with several former government officials, managed multimillion-dollar roadwork contracts that the complaint said were incomplete, overpriced and even unnecessary.
Fernández de Kirchner rejects these allegations.
The indictment specifically relates to 51 tenders in the province of Santa Cruz, where her late husband, former President Néstor Kirchner, was born and where both developed a good part of their professional and political careers before coming onto the national stage.
There is another fundamental figure in this indictment, that of Lázaro Báez, the former partner of the Kirchners, whom prosecutors say is the main beneficiary of this alleged fraud. In other words, that he would have been favored by directing the works and that he would later have benefited his alleged partners financially in other ways.
Prosecutor Luciani – who notes the beginning of the alleged fraud in Néstor Kirchner’s government – maintains that in order to siphon off funds, “overnight Lázaro Báez, a friend of the then president of the nation and business partner of his and his wife”.
Báez has already been sentenced to 12 years in prison for money laundering between 2003 and 2015, which was imposed in 2021 and which has been appealed to the Chamber of Cassation. Regarding this conviction, his lawyer explained that it was the result of an alleged “political and media persecution”. In a dialogue with CNN, Báez’s defense dismissed the allegations, claiming that the evidence used to confirm the illegal association belonged to a different file and that during the allegations it would show that prosecutors were lying with their arguments .
Thirteen people have been charged in the case, including the vice president. One of the most prominent involved is former Planning Minister Julio de Vido, whose lawyers responded that the allegations against him were untrue and that they would provide their answers in the relevant allegations.
Tension in front of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s house 4:15
could i go to jail
Fernández de Kirchner is protected by the same constitutional immunity as the president, so she cannot be arrested unless she is removed through impeachment. In other words, she would not go to jail, even if the court gave the green light to prosecutor Luciani’s 12-year petition, unless two-thirds of the House of Representatives blame her and an equal proportion of the senators find her guilty is available to the judiciary without any jurisdiction.
As long as she is not convicted, she would be fit to run for any elective office in the 2023 elections, such as for a senator, congressman or for the country’s presidency again. In each of these new positions she would again be protected by constitutional privileges.
In this regard, the Constitution provides that “No senator or representative shall be arrested from the date of his election until the date of his dismissal; unless he is caught in the act of committing a crime worthy of capital punishment, notorious or tormenting others”. (In the event that she was convicted, had no privileges and was forced to serve the sentence exists also the possibility of house arrest, since the law defines cases in which the judge can order the serving of the sentence at home and one of them is that the sentenced person is over 70. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner will meet them next February) .
Supporters of Argentina’s Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner sing outside her home in Buenos Aires August 25, 2022. (Credit: Luis Robayo/ AFP/ Getty Images)
Can Alberto Fernández forgive her?
The Constitution states that the President “may pardon or commute the sentences for crimes within the federal jurisdiction” except in cases where the prosecution originated with the House of Representatives.
After Luciani’s arrest warrant, the possibility of Fernández granting his vice president a pardon in the face of a conviction returned to the center of talks.
There are conflicting views in the legal field as to whether the mechanism could be applied in this particular case due to another article of Magna Carta dealing with crimes of corruption.
Another point being discussed is whether the President can pardon Fernández de Kirchner if a verdict has not yet been passed, because pardons can only be granted if there is a conviction. “The pardon is a power of the president that, from a constitutional point of view, is applied to people who have been convicted by a final judgment,” constitutional attorney Andrés Gil Domínguez told CNN Radio Argentina. However, there has long been debate as to whether it is possible for a person on trial, not convicted and presumed innocent, to be pardoned by a president because, in a sense, the presumption of innocence would be disregarded.
“This discussion took place in the 1990s, when Menem issued an omnibus pardon to supposedly pacify the country,” he recalled in an interview with María Laura Santillán, referring to the pardons given by the then president, of which military chiefs and The country’s leaders benefited from guerrillas, some of whom had no firm convictions.
“Then the Supreme Court (in a different composition) established that the pardon is a presidential power, always pursuing a goal of social pacification, acting both for those convicted with a final judgment and for the accused,” he said of what happened then in court for the benefits granted by Menem.
What remains is the request to condemn Cristina Fernández de Kirchner 7:19
President Fernández, for his part, has previously made this particular point. When he ran for office in 2019, he categorically ruled out a pardon. “If any fool thinks I’m going there (the Presidency) to pardon someone, he’s stupid (…). I don’t believe in pardons because pardons are an obstacle to monarchies. Presidents are not here to forgive anyone,” he said in an interview with Telenoche at the time.
However, the President described Prosecutor Luciani’s request as a prosecution after his decision became known, and hours later released a statement with his counterparts in Mexico, Colombia and Bolivia, assuring them that the prosecution against “the separated Cristina Fernández de Kirchner from public, political and electoral life”.
— With information from CNN’s Emilia Delfino, Iván Pérez Sarmenti, Juan Pablo Varsky and Abel Alvarado.