The Kirchners ‘installed an extraordinary matrix of corruption,’ accuses Argentine prosecutor

First modification: 08/01/2022 – 20:06

The prosecution accuses Kirchner of integrating “an illicit association” to defraud the State during her government, in alleged crimes that began in the previous presidency of her late husband Néstor Kirchner (2003-07), who died in 2010.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office “is accredited that between 2003 and 2015 an illicit association existed that had those who were heads of state at the peak of its operation,” said prosecutor Diego Luciani.

Kirchner, who is also president of the Senate, attended the hearing this Monday remotely from her office in the National Congress.

In this case, in which there are 12 others involved, it is being investigated whether there was a direction in the award of public works in the southern province of Santa Cruz, the political cradle of the Kirchners, granted to businessman Lázaro Báez, and also whether there were overprices.

Prosecutor Luciani announced that throughout the following argument hearings he intends to “prove how the defendants planned and executed this maneuver that caused colossal damage to the treasury and to all Argentines.”

Accusation

According to the prosecutor, “there was an agreement to maintain a staging among all those involved” to carry out the works, which, he assured, generated “immeasurable losses for the State” and “are still unfinished.”

However, an audit carried out at the request of the justice system by Vialidad Nacional, an entity attached to the Ministry of Public Works, determined that the work had been completed.

The Financial Information Unit (FIU) had considered “irresponsible to proceed with an accusation” by dismissing the prosecution’s arguments about the existence of the crimes of fraudulent administration and illicit association.

The prosecutor expressed his dissatisfaction with the FIU’s decision, which he accused of “grossly misrepresenting the meaning of the evidence.”

“If the FIU was the complainant, it was expected that if it acquitted it, it would explain why it discarded the amount of evidence,” he said.

The Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, who was chief of staff in the Kirchner governments, personally testified in the case last February and supported the vice president by stating that “there was never an arbitrary distribution of funds.”

The prosecution will expose the allegations in nine hearings scheduled for the next three weeks and then it will be the defense’s turn.

The trial began on May 21, 2019, had more than a hundred witnesses and had to be temporarily suspended in 2020 due to the covid-19 pandemic.

If she is convicted, Kirchner will be politically disqualified.

The 69-year-old vice president was dismissed in several cases for alleged crimes that occurred in her two presidential periods (2007-2015), but she still faces five trials.

Last October, a case was dismissed in which the former president was accused of covering up those responsible for the attack against the Jewish mutual society AMIA in Buenos Aires, which occurred in 1994 and left 85 dead and 300 injured.