Fernández de Kirchner on ruling: “They just banned me”

The former president and current vice president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, said on Friday that “they just banned me” after a court released the day before the grounds of sentence to six years in prison and perpetual disqualification from holding public office for the crime of fraudulent administration.

“The thing about the fundamentals of yesterday (for Thursday), more than fundamentals, is a euphemism. Millions of words and adjectives, no proof and a single objective: the ban”, said Fernández de Kirchner after receiving an Honoris Causa Doctorate from the National University of Río Negro, in Argentine Patagonia.

At the end of 2022, a federal court sentenced the former president to six years in prison for defrauding the State equivalent to some 400 million dollars today in road works between 2003 and 2015. As it is the maximum penalty provided by the Criminal Code for that crime, the court also barred her for life from holding public office.

On Thursday, the judges who sentenced Fernández de Kirchner announced the grounds of their sentence, a procedural step that formally opens the appeal instance.

According to the magistrates, it was “a serious act of unprecedented corruption, committed from the front line of the National State” and that, for this very reason, “we believe that the just sanction for such an event should far exceed the maximum scale penalty authorized by law”.

The center-left leader, in addition to proclaiming her innocence, considered that the purpose of the sentence is to remove her from the political game ahead of the general elections in October.

“Yesterday (for Thursday) they just banned me,” he insisted. “I think the one who said it best was the Minister of the Interior (Wado de Pedro): they have replaced the Electoral Code with the Penal Code. This is the truth”.

From the regulations, the vice president could run for any position and be elected, but if the Supreme Court confirms the sentence – something that does not have a date – she will not be able to exercise it.

According to the court that tried her, during the oral trial it was accredited “the intervention in the maneuver of members of the highest spheres of the National Executive Power… In coexistence with a construction businessman dedicated to public works, with the purpose of to ensure an economic benefit both to him and to the conjugal partnership made up of former presidents Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) –died in 2010– and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015)”.

Lázaro Báez, the person in charge of the company favored with 51 road works in the province of Santa Cruz, “irregularly collected millions in amounts from the national State and then allocated them to private operations with the former president of the Nation, who allowed and facilitated the disbursement of that money guided by a clear personal interest”.

For the court, “acts of corruption like the ones we are judging here affect and put the democratic system in check” and “must be punished with the same intensity.”

The vice president considers herself persecuted by judicial sectors in cahoots with her successor in power, former conservative president Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), to undermine her popularity, remove her from the political scene and outlaw Kirchnerism.

“Today, 40 years after democracy, I believe that what we are experiencing in terms of the division of powers, when we see the most important sector of the opposition allied with the Judiciary, I believe that today we are not facing a constitutional democratic State”, closed Fernández de Kirchner.

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