The vice president maintains that the sentence “is already written” after the Prosecutor’s Office has requested 12 years in prison for her for alleged corruption during her time at the head of the country
The Argentine vice president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, said on Tuesday that “the sentence was already written”, after the Prosecutor’s Office requested for her on Monday a sentence of 12 years in prison and disqualification from holding public office in the trial for alleged irregularities in the adjudication of public works when it was mandatory (2007-2015).
“The sentence was already written,” Cristina Fernández recalled, something she had already said in the investigative statement she made in 2019, in a speech she broadcast this Tuesday through her social networks from her office in the Senate -of which she is president – when questioning that Justice rejected his request to expand his preliminary statement at this stage of the trial.
The prosecution of the former president aggravates the crisis that the country is going through, weighed down by galloping inflation. The Government, which has undergone several remodeling in recent weeks, has experienced several fractures in the Kirchnerist wing and Peronism. In fact, the president, Alberto Fernández, does not speak to the vice president about her, although he has called the trial against her “judicial and political persecution.”
Cristina Fernández is accused of the alleged crime of illicit association and fraudulent administration of public funds, due to alleged irregularities in the concession of 51 public works to firms of the businessman Lázaro Báez during his term between 2007 and 2015 and the late Néstor Kirchner (2003- 2007) in the southern province of Santa Cruz.
“The prosecutors were able to read his script for nine days. I would have liked to speak in front of the court », Cristina Fernández said this Tuesday, later complaining that she was not allowed to broadcast or televise the investigative statement in 2019 and that now they rejected the extension of her investigation.
“I should not be surprised because, as I said on that occasion, the sentence was already written,” he said.
A “fierce” campaign
Accompanied by the chants of hundreds of followers who gathered at the gates of Congress, the former president chronologically recounted the details of an investigation -known as ‘Causa Vialidad’- which involved, in her opinion, a “fierce political and media campaign » against him, based on alleged surcharges around the construction of «non-existent routes» in the southern province of Santa Cruz, the political cradle of Kirchnerism.
Fernández de Kirchner appears on the balcony of Congress to greet his supporters, this Tuesday /
During her speech, the vice president argued that there is no evidence against her and that none of those summoned to testify during the trial supported with their testimony the version of the prosecutors, whom she blamed for adopting the “script” of the related media. to the current political opposition.
Fernández, who in recent years has avoided requests for preventive detention issued against him in various cases -in many of which he was dismissed- thanks to the privileges that protect him, has always defended his innocence and has claimed to be the target of a political persecution.
In the event that she is convicted, the 69-year-old vice president, who in principle enjoys privileges until December 2023, will have the right to appeal the sentence before higher courts.
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