Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was sentenced to six years in prison for corruption by a federal court in Buenos Aires on Tuesday, Reuters news agency reported. The court also banned her from holding any political office for the rest of her life. Prosecutors had demanded 12 years in prison.
Kirchner, 69, has been found guilty of fraud in the procurement of government projects during her presidency from 2007 to 2015 and that of her husband Néstor Kirchner before that. A friend of the family, building contractor Lázaro Báez, was awarded dozens of projects that often went heavily over budget or were never completed. He paid a bribe to the Kirchners for that, prosecutors argued at trial. In total, the state would have been disadvantaged by 884 million euros. Báez was also sentenced to six years in prison.
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Political Immunity
The verdict does not mean that Kirchner will actually disappear behind bars in the short term, because she enjoys political immunity. She will also almost certainly appeal and as long as appeals are pending, she is free anyway and can also stay on as vice president.
Kirchner denies the corruption and speaks of a political process. She calls the court “a firing squad” and said after her conviction that there is “a parallel state and a legal mafia.” Kirchner, who has dominated politics in Argentina for about twenty years, also announced that she will not be a candidate for anything in next year’s elections. In early September, she narrowly escaped an assassination attempt.