A federal court in Argentina sentenced on Tuesday Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to six years in prison for the crime of "fraudulent administration" in a case on the direction of road works in the province of Santa Cruz during her administration as president, from 2007 to 2015, and that of former President Néstor Kirchner, from 2003 until 2007.
Buenos Aires, December 6 (RHC)-- A federal court in Argentina sentenced on Tuesday Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to six years in prison for the crime of "fraudulent administration" in a case on the direction of road works in the province of Santa Cruz during her administration as president, from 2007 to 2015, and that of former President Néstor Kirchner, from 2003 until 2007.
The Oral Federal Criminal Court No. 2 of Buenos Aires resolved "to sentence Cristina Elizabeth Fernández de Kirchner to six years in prison, special perpetual disqualification from holding public office (...) for considering her criminally responsible for the crime of fraudulent administration to the detriment of the public administration," Judge Rodrigo Giménez Uriburu read during the hearing.
Fernández, who was facing a request for a 12-year prison sentence and special disqualification from holding public office for the crimes of illicit association and fraud, at the request of prosecutors Diego Luciani and Sergio Mola, may appeal the verdict, so the sentence is not final.
After three and a half years of trial, the court also sentenced to six years of imprisonment businessman Lázaro Báez, whose firm, Austral Construcciones, received the 51 public works projects investigated in this oral debate. The rest of the 11 defendants in the case received prison sentences ranging from three years and six months to six years.
Given the expectations generated by the sentence against the former president for being the most important political leader of the country, the federal courts of the Argentine capital have been fenced since the day before.
A large security operation was deployed since Tuesday morning, with the intervention of the Federal Police to control the interior of the Palace of Justice and the court where the sentence was read, and the Police of the city of Buenos Aires, responsible for supervising the exterior.
"This sentence was already written," said the former president on Tuesday after hearing the sentence in her office in the Senate. Cristina Fernandez, who can appeal the verdict before the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation, so the sentence is not final, attributed her conviction "to a parallel state and the mafia."
In her argument, the vice-president read Article 143, which refers to the crime of fraudulent administration for which she was convicted, and assured that the idea was to convict her "as they finally did today." At the beginning of her argument, the vice-president clarified that the head of the Executive Branch "does not have the management of the Budget laws, which deputies and senators approve."
"The curious thing is that they say that I committed the crime through the sanction of laws and in the execution and administration of the Budget of the Nation on works executed in the province of Santa Cruz," she observed.
In this sense, the verdict announced by the Oral Federal Criminal Court No. 2 of Buenos Aires comes from "a parastatal system that decides on life, patrimony and freedom and outside the electoral results," said the also president of the Senate.
