Buenos Aires, Argentina-the highest court in Argentina confirmed a six-year prison sentence for former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in a ruling on Tuesday that permanently expelled her from a public office for the sentence of corruption that she found that she had addressed state contracts to a friend while she was the first lady and president.
The explosive ruler of the Supreme Court left Fernández, the charismatic former leader of Argentina but deeply divisive, subject to arrest and sent their supporters to pour to the streets of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, and block the main roads in protest.
The court asked the Ministry of Security of Argentina to establish a detention center to keep Fernández, 72. His defense lawyer Carlos Beraldi told C5N, a television station in Buenos Aires, who had asked Fernández to be able to fulfill his sentence in the house arrest given his age.
The ruler prohibits Fernández from running in the legislative elections of Buenos Aires of this fall, a few days after launching his campaign.
Fernández, who dominated Argentine politics for two decades and forged the main left -wing populist movement of the country known as Kirchnerism, after she and her husband, former President Nérstor Kirchner, rejects charges as politically motivated.
During the eight years of Fernández in office (2007–2015), Argentina expanded cash payments to the poor and pioneered the main social assistance programs. But their governments financed unbridled state spending by printing money, bringing Argentina’s notoriety due to massive budget deficits and high inflation.
The critics blamed the years of economic volatility of Argentina to the policies of Fernández, and outraged the successive economic crises and the country’s swollen bureaucracy helped jump to the radical libertarian president Javier Milei to the presidency at the end of 2023.
The ruling gave a severe blow to the opposition of Milei for a crucial year of mid -period. He celebrated the ruling, writing on social networks: “Justice. Period.”
Fernández was involved in multiple corruption scandals during his mandate. It was sentenced in 2022 in this case of corruption, which focused on 51 public contracts for public works granted to companies linked to Lázaro Báez, a convict construction magnate and friend of the presidential couple, at 20% prices above the standard rate in a scheme that cost the state tens of millions of dollars.
The Superior Court rejected Fernández’s application for the Court to review its prison sentence in March. In a resolution obtained by Associated Press, the court said that the prison sentence “does nothing more than protect our republican and democratic system.”
Kirchner’s governments carried out “an extraordinary fraudulent maneuver” that damaged the interests of the government and resulted in the embezzlement of approximately $ 70 million at the current exchange rate, said the resolution.
The supporters of Fernández and his political movement blocked the main roads in Buenos Aires and assaulted the offices of the two main cable networks of Argentina that are widely considered critical of the former leader, Channel 13 and all news, breaking televisions, vandalizing cars and destroying windows. No injuries were reported.
Fernández rejected the decision, qualifying the judges of the “puppets” courts of those who wielded economic power in the country.
“There are three puppets that respond to those who govern well above them,” he told the followers in an exciting speech outside the headquarters of his party. “It is not the opposition. It is the concentrated economic power of the Government of Argentina.”
Gregorio Dalbón, one of Fernández’s lawyers, promised to “take this case to all international human rights organizations.”
Fernández has questioned the impartiality of the judges. She states that her defense did not have access to much of the evidence and that she met without taking into account legal deadlines.
Fernández faces a series of other close judgments on corruption positions.
