Argentina: Socialist VP Sentenced to 6 Years in Prison – But Immunized from Serving Time

An Argentine federal court found the nation’s current vice president and former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner guilty on Tuesday of corruption and sentenced her to six years in prison.

The court convicted Fernández, a hardline socialist with close ties to the Cuban and Venezuelan dictatorships, of defrauding the Argentine state through public works contracts granted during her presidency. In addition to sentencing her to prison, the ruling imposes a lifetime ban on her from holding any public office in the South American nation.

Fernández de Kirchner is unlikely to serve her sentence, as her position as both Argentina’s current vice president and head of the Argentine Senate grants her immunity from the court’s ruling. She has, however, stated that she will depart politics as a result of it and will rescind her presidential campaign aspirations for 2023. Fernández de Kirchner is expected to appeal the sentence through a lengthy process that can span multiple years.

Fernández de Kirchner was accused of irregularly granting 51 public road works contracts to Argentine businessman and close friend Lázaro Báez during her two presidential terms between 2007 and 2015, defrauding the Argentine State for upwards of $1 billion. The case is commonly referred to as Causa Vialidad (Road Case).

The conviction makes Fernández the latest in a growing list of far-left South American leaders belonging to the 2000s “pink wave” of heads of state to face legal woes as a result of corrupt behavior. 

Rafael Correa, former president of Ecuador, was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison in 2020 on corruption charges. Bolivia’s former president, Evo Morales, has faced charges of electoral fraud, terrorism, and pedophilia. The socialist government of President Luis Arce dropped all of the charges against Morales in October 2020. 

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former president of Brazil and current president-elect, was sentenced to over two decades in prison on corruption charges — until the nation’s top court overturned his conviction in 2021, allowing him to once again run for president in 2022.

Ollanta Humala, former president of Peru, is currently undergoing a lengthy trial in which he, along with his wife, faces corruption charges involving the Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht — a company that is involved in a massive region-wide corruption scandal in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In August, a team of Argentine federal prosecutors led by prosecutor Diego Luciani called for a 12-year sentence for Fernández de Kirchner on fraud and illicit organization (conspiracy) charges, as well as requesting a lifetime ban for Fernández de Kirchner from holding public office. Argentine courts dropped the conspiracy charges against her, sentencing her only on fraud charges. Luciani announced on Wednesday that he will appeal the conspiracy dismissal so that it is added to her sentence.

Luciani is the second Argentine prosecutor to pursue a case against Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. In 2015, prosecutor Alberto Nisman compiled extensive evidence, which he was to present to the Argentine Congress that year, implicating Ferńandez de Kirchner in having helped cover up the role of Iranian terrorists in the 1994 bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) building, the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history, where 85 people died.

Nisman was found dead on the eve of the corresponding congressional hearing. Argentine authorities ruled his death a suicide.

Prior to the Causa Vialidad trial, Fernández de Kirchner had been charged on three different occasions in the past, all of which were dismissed throughout 2021. In 2014, a federal investigation was conducted against the Hotelsur hotel chain, which belongs to Férnandez de Kirchner’s family. The investigation concluded with accusations of tax evasion and money laundering. Despite Nisman’s death, Férnandez de Kirchner was formally charged in 2015 with having helped cover up Iran’s involvement in the AMIA bombing terrorist attack. That case was controversially dismissed in October 2021.

The Argentine vice president had also been accused of money laundering and fraud through foreign exchange contracts that incurred heavy losses to the nation’s Central Bank in 2015.

The dismissal of the past charges against Fernández de Kirchner has been appealed and all three trials could be reopened pending the corresponding rulings from Argentina’s Supreme Justice Courts.

Fernández de Kirchner responded to the court’s sentence in a nearly hour-long online address on Wednesday in which she, visibly upset, accused Argentina’s Judicial branch of being a “mafia” and a “parallel state.”

“This is much simpler, this is neither lawfare nor the Judicial Party, this is a parallel state and a judicial mafia,” she said, claiming that the objective of the trial against her was to remove her from power.

“The sentence is not six years in jail. The real sentence they give is perpetual disqualification from holding elective political positions. When all the positions I had access to were always through popular vote. Four governments won with the last name Kirchner. This is why they are charging me. For this they disqualify me,” she said.

During her address, the Argentine vice president, who was poised to launch her candidacy for yet another presidential term next year, announced that she will not be “a candidate for anything” and that her name “will not be on any ballot.”

“I am not going to subject the political force that gave me the honor to be mistreated in an electoral period with a condemned candidate. Well, I’m not going to be a candidate,” she stated. Argentina’s constitution stipulates that a president can serve up to two consecutive four-year terms, but may be elected again after a minimum interval of one term has elapsed.

Fernández de Kirchner availed herself of her speech to directly blast Hector Magnetto, CEO of the Clarín Media group, the nation’s largest media company. Fernández de Kirchner has been at odds with the Clarín media group and its CEO, one of her fiercest critics, for years. The conflict between Fernández de Kirchner and the Clarín media group goes back to the days of the presidency of her late husband, Néstor Kirchner, from 2003 to 2007.

“I will not be a candidate – in fact, it is very good news for you, Magnetto, do you know why? Because on December 10, 2023, I will not have privileges, I will not be vice president, so [Magnetto] will be able to give the order to his henchmen of the [Argentina’s Chamber of Cassation] and the Supreme Court to put me in jail,” she said. “This is what you [Magnetto] wanted, to see me in prison or dead.”

The president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández (no relation), responded to Fernández de Kirchner’s sentence through a post on Twitter published on Tuesday evening.

Hoy, en Argentina, ha sido condenada una persona inocente. Alguien a quien los poderes fácticos trataron de estigmatizar a través de medios de comunicación y perseguido a través de jueces complacientes a los que pasean en aviones privados y mansiones de lujo los fines de semana.

— Alberto Fernández (@alferdez) December 6, 2022

“Today, in Argentina, an innocent person has been sentenced. Someone whom the powers-that-be tried to stigmatize through the media and persecuted through complacent judges who ride around in private jets and pass weekends in luxury mansions,” the message read.

The communist Castro regime’s puppet president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, expressed his support of Fernández de Kirchner in a similar manner.

Reiteramos nuestro rechazo a los procesos judiciales políticamente motivados y reafirmamos todo nuestro apoyo y solidaridad a @CFKArgentina frente al acoso judicial y mediático en su contra.#CubaTeAbraza #TodosConCristina

— Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (@DiazCanelB) December 7, 2022

“We reiterate our rejection of politically motivated judicial processes and we reaffirm all our support and solidarity with Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in the face of judicial and media harassment against her,” he wrote.

In addition to Fernández de Kirchner, a dozen other citizens were sentenced in the same case – including former Federal Planning Minister and former congressman Julio De Vido, who was sentenced to six years in prison for fraud; José López, former Secretary of Public Works; Nelson Periotti, the former head of the National Highway Directorate; and Argentine businessman Lázaro Báez.

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