The vice president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández, was sentenced this Tuesday to 6 years in prison in a trial for irregularities in the concession of road works during the Kirchner governments (2003-2015).
When passing sentence in a trial that had begun in May 2019, the Federal Oral Court 2 also sentenced the former president to perpetual disqualification from holding public office.
The judges found Cristina Fernández guilty of the crime of fraudulent administration of public funds, but they acquitted her on the charges for alleged illicit association.
The sentence set for Fernández in the so-called “Road case” is less than the 12-year prison term that the Prosecutor’s Office had requested last August in the final arguments of this process.
The oral court also ordered the confiscation of the effects of the crime, which consist of a sum of 84,835 million pesos (US$482 million).
The 69-year-old former president, who in principle enjoys immunity until December 2023 due to her position in the Executive, has the right to appeal the sentence to higher courts.
In this process, irregularities were judged in the concession of 51 public works to firms of the businessman Lázaro Báez during the governments of the late Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and Cristina Fernández (2007-2015) in the southern province of Santa Cruz, the political cradle of the kirchnerism.
In addition to sentencing Cristina Fernández, the court also imposed a 6-year prison sentence for Lázaro Báez, the former Secretary of Public Works José López and the former head of the National Highway Directorate Nelson Periotti.
It also imposed various sentences of between 3 and a half and 5 years on the former heads of the National Road Administration in Santa Cruz Mauricio Collareda and Raúl Daruich, the former presidents of the Provincial Road Agency in Santa Cruz Raúl Pavesi and José Raúl Santibañez and Juan Carlos Villafañe , former mayor of the southern city of Río Gallegos and former president of Vialidad de Santa Cruz.
On the other hand, the court acquitted Julio De Vido, Minister of Federal Planning of Argentina between 2003 and 2015; Abel Fatala, former Undersecretary of Public Works of Argentina, and Héctor Garro, former president of the Provincial Road Agency in Santa Cruz.
In the case of Carlos Kirchner, cousin of former President Néstor Kirchner and former head of the Federal Public Works Coordination Undersecretary, the judges acquitted him of the crime of illicit association and ordered his dismissal for breach of the duties of a public official, considering that this offense had prescribed.
The vice president, who in recent years has circumvented the requests for preventive detention issued against her in various cases -in many of which she was dismissed- thanks to the privileges that protect her, has always defended her innocence and has claimed to be the target of judicial and political harassment.
In its final stretch, the trial was shaken by the attack suffered by Cristina Fernández on September 1, when a man tried to shoot her at the doors of her home in Buenos Aires, while a group of followers demonstrated their support for the vice president in the Judicial process.
Source: EFE.
