Argentina: Prosecutor Requests 12-Year Prison Sentence for Socialist Vice President

Vice President of Argentina Cristina Fernandez greets supporters as arriving at her apartm
Marcos Brindicci/Getty Images
Christian K. Caruzo

A federal prosecutor in Argentina called for a 12-year prison sentence for the nation’s current vice president and former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner on Monday.

The prosecutor’s call follows corruption and fraud allegations that stem from a judicial case against Fernández de Kirchner – a radical leftist with ties to the dictatorships of Cuba and Venezuela – and her alleged involvement in the defrauding of public funds during her presidency of the South American country.

It also occurs seven years after a warrant for her arrest was found in the home trash bin of another prosecutor, Alberto Nisman. Nisman was mysteriously found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in his apartment the day before he was to accuse Fernández de Kirchner of helping Iran cover up a terrorist bombing before Congress in 2015.

The request for prison time for Fernández this time was spearheaded by Argentine prosecutor Diego Luciani who, in addition to the 12-year prison sentence, is also calling for Fernández to be banned for life from holding public office.

“Today more than ever, society demands justice and you, gentlemen judges, are in charge of giving each one what corresponds,” Prosecutor Luciani said on Monday as part of his closing arguments at the end of the corresponding oral trial. “Our only goal was to seek the truth. Judges, this is the time. It is corruption or justice. And you have the decision.”

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who currently is both Argentina’s vice president and head of the Argentine senate, was the South American nation’s president between 2007 and 2015. She succeeded her husband, Nestor Kirchner. 

Luciani accused Fernández of alleged fraud and “’illicit organization” (conspiracy) alongside other government officials and Argentine businessman Lazaro Báez as part of a process that began in 2019. The accusations state that the fraud occurred through Báez’s companies, which received a substantial amount of public works contracts during Fernández de Kirchner’s presidency between 2007 and 2015.

Argentine federal prosecutor Sergio Mola said on Monday that the damage caused by Fernández’s alleged defrauding of the Argentine state through the 51 public works contracts received by businessman Báez amounts to 5.231 billion Argentine pesos (roughly $926 million) and ordered the amount be seized from the accused businessman’s companies.

After the calls for prison against Férnandez de Kirchner were made, both supporters and opponents of clashed outside the vice president’s home, with Argentine riot police having to hold both sides back.

Fernández de Kirchner, who was authorized by Argentina’s Federal courts to be absent from the oral hearings due to her institutional functions as vice president, responded to both prosecutors on Tuesday by posting a 90-minute video on her social media accounts where she claims that both prosecutors Luciani and Mola’s allegations against her are fictional and that they are following “a script” created by the Argentine opposition and media.

“Nothing they said was proven,” Fernández de Kirchner said. Despite the length of her video, Fernández de Kirchner did not present any piece of evidence to disprove the incriminations of the prosecutors nor did she reference the evidence presented by them.

Instead, Férnandez de Kirchner claims that the legal case against her is part of an attack against her previous government and that of her late husband, Néstor Kirchner.

“This judicial party not only stigmatizes us, the Peronists, the Kirchnerists, the nationals, the popular ones, whatever they want to call us, but it is going to protect them, because it is protecting them,” she said. “Peronists” refer to the coalition of the Jusiticialism Party, which in modern Argentina represents the left. Its founder, Juan Perón, famously created alliances with both the far left and fascists.

“You know what? The ones who do experience things are the Argentines, who have no money, who don’t get enough of anything because of the indebtedness we had and how they destroyed what we were able to build for 12 years,” Fernández ranted. “No Argentine can say that he did not live better than now. And that he had not lived better than ever until that moment. That is why the prosecutor asks for 12 years. They are the 12 years of the best government that Argentina had in recent decades.”

Kirchner and his wife governed for 12 consecutive years.

“And I want to tell you something, if I were born 20 times, 20 times I would do the same,” she asserted.

According to the news website Infobae, sources close to the prosecution claim that Luciani did not bother to watch the video.

“For him [Luciani], as a prosecutor, what happens in the trial hearings is what matters, which is where the case unfolds, outside the trial it does not correspond to him,” a source close to the prosecutor said to Infobae on Tuesday.

Férnandez de Kirchner holds dual-immunity from being arrested due to her status as both Argentina’s current vice president and head of Senate that can be removed by a vote of two-thirds of the Argentine senate at the request of a corresponding court order.

The accusations are the latest following three other charges against her levied throughout 2021, all of them dismissed. 

In 2014, a federal investigation against the Hotelsur chain of hotels belonging to Férnandez de Kirchner’s family concluded with accusations of tax evasion and money laundering. Kirchner was also accused of money laundering and defraudment through foreign exchange contracts that incurred heavy losses to the Argentine Central Bank in 2015.

In 2015, prosecutor Alberto Nisman had accused Ferńandez de Kirchner of having helped cover up the role of Iranian terrorists in the 1994 bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA), where 85 people died. The AMIA bombing is considered to be the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history and the deadliest in the Western Hemisphere prior to September 11, 2001.

Nisman was found dead on the eve of the congressional hearings, with Argentine authorities swiftly ruling his death as suicide.

A year later, Antonio Stiuso, the former head of Argentina’s intelligence agency, testified that Nisman was murdered for his investigating Iran’s involvement in the AMIA bombing. Nisman’s work led to Interpol issuing several red notices, or requests for arrest, for Iranian government officials in relation to the bombing.

Férnandez de Kirchner was formally charged with having helped cover up Iran’s involvement in the AMIA bombing in 2015 but, after seven years, the case was dismissed in a controversial ruling on October 2021.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.

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