Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, currently serving as vice president of Argentina, was convicted guilty of corruption on Tuesday and given a six-year prison term as well as a lifetime ban from holding public office. But thanks to immunity, she will be free until the completion of her sentence.
The Peronist leader was found guilty of fraud by a three-judge panel, but the accusation of leading a criminal organization—for which a 12-year jail sentence might have been imposed—was dismissed. First vice-president of Argentina to be found guilty of a crime while in office.
The verdict on appeals, which might take years, will determine whether the sentence is final. As long as she can continue to win elections, she is protected from arrest in the interim.
Since December 2019, Kirchner has served as vice president and head of the Argentine senate. A two-thirds majority in the chamber would be required to remove Kirchner’s immunity. She also has the choice to ask the Supreme Court to review the decision.
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The decision on Tuesday marks the first instance in Argentina of a vice president receiving a sentence for misconduct while in office. Presidents Carlos Menem, Fernando de la Rua, and Amado Boudou, Kirchner’s vice president, had all been found guilty after leaving office.
Kirchner had refuted all of the accusations and described the proceedings as politicised and rife with errors. Soon after the decision, she said it went beyond “lawfare.”
She called herself the victim of a “judicial mafia” in her post-verdict remarks.
“This is a parallel state and judicial mafia, and the confirmation of a parastatal system where decisions are made about the life, patrimony and freedom of all Argentines outside the electoral results,” she said.
Kirchner was suspected of giving Lázaro Baez, a businessman who was a friend of the couple, millions in public works funding after her late husband Neastor (2003–2007) died.
Kirchner was also accused of establishing a falsely low price for dollar-denominated futures after she left government in 2015, although she was eventually cleared of the accusation. Another treason allegation against her was later dropped, and a federal court dismissed a claim that she had forged a covert agreement with Iran to shield the suspected perpetrators of a terrorist explosion in 1994 in October 2021.
Kirchner was backed by President Alberto Fernandez, who described the probe investigating her as “political.” Although no official announcements have been made, it was widely anticipated Kirchner will seek for the position again in Argentina’s upcoming 11-month presidential election.
Juan and Eva Peron created Argentina’s current government’s Justicialist Party in 1946, and Kirchner is regarded as its most powerful member. In the Chamber of Deputies, the Argentine parliament’s lower house, her son Maximo is in charge of the majority bloc that controls the government.
In the South American country, where politics can be a blood sport and the 69-year-old populist leader is either adored or despised, the judgement is guaranteed to widen existing rifts.
Lazaro Baez, a construction mogul and early ally of Fernandez and her husband Nestor Kirchner, who presided over from 2003 to 2007 and passed away unexpectedly in 2010, was allegedly given 51 public works projects by Fernandez under false pretences.
Twelve people, including Baez and officials from her presidential administration from 2007 to 2015, are charged with conspiring with Fernandez.
Both Baez and José López, her secretary for public works, received a six-year term from the panel. Most of the other people received shorter sentences.
