Argentina’s public prosecutor on Monday demanded 12 years in prison against the country’s current vice president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The 69-year-old politician is on trial in a corruption trial for allegedly fraudulently awarding dozens of public tenders between 2007 and 2015. During that period, she was president of Argentina.
The prosecutor also demands that Kirchner be banned from holding public office for the rest of her life.
The lawsuit is to find out whether Kirchner favored businessman Lazaro Baez’s companies in tendering for public works in the southern Argentine region of Patagonia. Those projects were either overpaid by the government or were never completed. Twelve others are also on trial. Many experts suspect that part of the money for the tenders through Baez has ended up in the hands of the Kirchner family again.
Kirchner has repeatedly denied the allegations. On Twitter, current Argentine President Alberto Fernández condemned the prosecutor’s claim. “None of the acts attributed to the former president have been proven,” he said in a statement.
Inviolable
A court decision is not expected until the end of this year. Kirchner will not immediately go to prison if convicted. In addition to being vice president, she is also a member of the Argentine Senate and therefore enjoys parliamentary immunity. There are only two ways she can lose that immunity: by losing her seat in the next election, or if Argentina’s Supreme Court upholds a possible guilty verdict by the court.
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