This Friday, the lawyer Roberto Herrera revealed that his client, Victor Manzanaresdid not want to leave prison to pay for his guilt for the corruption crimes that involved him. The counter Nestor and Cristina Kirchner became one of the main repentants in the cause of the “Notebooks of Bribes” and, until now, he has refused to present any request for release. “I deserve it, what I did is wrong, he told me,” said the lawyer regarding what his client confessed in an interview with Radio Rivadavia.
The prosecutor Carlos Stornelli had indicated that Manzanares’ contributions of information and documentation were very important to reconstruct the money laundering circuit during the Kirchner administration. At the time, when he presented himself as repentant, the accountant provided information that made it possible to identify operations through which Daniel Muñoz, the deceased marriage secretary Kirchner, laundered his fortune of more than 70 million dollars.
According to the prosecutor’s accusation in the case, Muñoz received bags with the bribes they collected at Cristina Kirchner’s apartment. Roberto Barrata and his driver Oscar Centeno. Manzanares had declared in February 2019 as “repentant” and provided many details about financial operations that he himself carried out to launder Muñoz’s own fortune with the purchase of 113 properties in the country and a dozen in Miami, New York and Turks & Caicos.
In the radio interview, Herrera explained that Manzanares “is very Catholic and said that he did something wrong and had to pay for his guilt.” “Manzanares was Néstor and Cristina Kirchner’s lifelong accountant; that is why his testimony is very interesting,” added the defender. Years ago, Manzanares faced journalists, who asked him if it didn’t bother him that his judicial situation was much worse than that of the Kirchner family. “It is difficult to give an opinion about others, I may think that it would be wrong, but I have to focus on myself and the consequences that I have to pay to the State,” said the detainee on that occasion.
Víctor Manzanares represents a piece of strategic importance for the Cuadernos cause because he puts in his story the accounting, corporate and financial mechanism of the bribery network that is being investigated. His status as the Kirchners’ former accountant makes him a valuable witness, and his repentance could shed light on how the system of bribes, laundering and distribution of illicit funds worked.
Born in Santa Cruz, he began his professional activity as an accountant in 1988, in his father’s studio. He was appointed trustee of the Bank of the Province of Santa Cruz in 1992, during Néstor Kirchner’s term as governor, which reinforced the professional link between his studio and the ruling family. As a professional, he was also a participant in multiple companies linked to the business group linked to the Kirchners, according to the investigation of different journalistic sources.
Arrested in July 2017 in Río Gallegos by order of the federal judge Claudio Bonadio, within the framework of the Los Sauces case, which investigated alleged money laundering and collection of returns from businessmen. In 2025, Manzanares was accepted as an accused collaborator in the case known as Cuadernos Cause, which implies that his statement is incorporated as evidence in the investigation.
The starting point of the case is some handwritten notebooks by Oscar Centeno, driver of former official Roberto Baratta, who was the right hand of the then minister Julio De Vido in the Ministry of National Planning. For years, these notebooks recorded transfers of bags of money from businessmen to officials and precise destinations. The file maintains that multiple construction companies paid bribes in exchange for obtaining national public works contracts between 2003 and 2015, under the Kirchnerist governments.
The central accusation maintains that there was an illicit association, led by Cristina Kirchner, to collect and launder these funds. Last week, the oral and public trial against more than 80 defendants began, in what has been described as the largest corruption trial in Argentine history. The court is articulated around four axes of accusation, including the cartelization of public works, the irregular allocation of road corridors and railway transportation, and improper collection.
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