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The Argentine vice president defended herself against the 12 years in prison requested by the country’s Prosecutor’s Office for alleged corruption crimes between 2003 and 2015, during her mandates and her late husband Néstor Kirchner and when she herself was president. Fernández assures that the investigation has political motives and defended her innocence.
The Argentine vice president and one of the most beloved and disdained political figures at the same time in the country of the Southern Cone, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, spoke for an hour and a half to defend herself against the accusations of the Prosecutor’s Office, which asks her for 12 years in prison for alleged irregularities in the award of public works.
“The sentence was already written,” he declared forcefully. The same phrase he had pronounced in 2019 in the investigative stage of the process, known as ‘Causa Vialidad’. “When I said they had the sentence written, I fell short,” she redoubled this time.
Fernández delivered her speech from the office of the Argentine Senate, an institution she presides over, surrounded by notes and newspaper articles about the accusations that, she insists, are orchestrated by the opposition and have a political motivation.
Beneath his office, several followers of politics were grouped, whom Fernández later came out to greet. During the previous day, demonstrations were called in Buenos Aires both for and against Fernández and the investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office.
The vice president, who also led the country between 2007 and 2015, is being investigated for alleged crimes of illicit association and fraudulent administration of public funds. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, she committed irregularities by granting 51 public works in the province of Santa Cruz, her political fiefdom, both during her mandate and during that of her deceased husband Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007).
Now, the prosecutor in the case, Diego Luciani, requests 12 years in prison and the perpetual disqualification of the former president.
“It is a trial of Peronism”
During her plea of innocence, Cristina Fernández denounced that the trial is not against her but against all of Peronism, the political current with the longest left-wing tradition in the country. “They are not coming for me, they are coming for you,” warned the vice president.
In addition, he assured that he does not regret any action during his mandate. “They are going to condemn me, but if I were born twenty times, I would do the same twenty times (…) They ask us for 12 years because they are the 12 years of the best government that Argentina had in recent decades,” he said.
Fernández attacked Luciani and the other prosecutor in the case, Sergio Mola, as macristas (that is, followers of former conservative president Mauricio Macri) and for having been carried away by the “fierce political and media campaign” of the opposition.
In addition, he specifically criticized them for having overlooked some messages between two businessmen (Nicolás Caputo and Eduardo Gutiérrez) and José López, former secretary of public works during the Kirchner governments, and who was arrested at the time with illicitly accumulated public money. According to Fernández, these messages are the truly suspicious ones and not her own actions.
A judicial fence for Fernández
The ‘Cause Vialidad’ is not the only one that exists around the figure of Cristina Fernández. Several judicial investigations weigh on the current vice president and former president of Argentina; In fact, on more than one occasion she has been asked to be held in preventive detention, but she has avoided it thanks to the political privileges that protect her for holding public office.
For example, in 2018 Fernández’s imprisonment was requested for a cause known as the ‘Corruption Notebooks’, in which she is accused of being the head of an illicit association. Another cause, initiated in 2015, investigates her for allegedly having advanced dollar contract operations at a price lower than the market price.
Several of the cases that have been directed against Fernández have been dismissed, that is, the investigations have been completed because the innocence of the accused person is proven or because evidence is lacking.
The vice president is 69 years old and has political privileges until December 2023.
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