Víctor Manzanares, the first repentant who implicated Cristina Kirchner, met his lawyer, Roberto Herrera, in the Marcos Paz pavilion. The lawyer went back and forth with papers and notes that he took to a client: Natividad Roger Terán, former mayor of Itatí convicted of corruption.
“Why does my lawyer never bring me a piece of paper?” Manzanares asked himself when he saw Herrera. “You don’t have your own defense,” they encouraged him in the prison. Until then, accountant K was represented by Carlos Beraldi, Cristina Kirchner’s lawyer, much more concerned about the former president’s judicial situation than his own.
Manzanares made the first act of rebellion in many years against the Kirchner family: he broke the power he had given to Beraldi and hired that unknown lawyer who came in and out of Marcos Paz loaded with papers.
Manzanares was soon joined by the suitcase driver, Leonardo Fariña. Herrera was beginning to emerge as the defender of the repentant of the Kirchnerist decade. And some time later, even though his work had complicated the Báez family a lot, Lázaro’s youngest son, Leandro, was added to his client portfolio, with whom he is currently preparing a trial that begins in February. He also advised Norma Calismonte, the ex-wife of businessman K., for a year.
The lawyer did not have an easy profile: his clients were part of the Kirchnerist corruption or at least lived off its fruits, and then they were left out for different reasons.
Protagonist. Cristina put Herrera at the center of the scene a couple of weeks ago, when in a tweet she cited his statements to establish the version that the repentants were extorted, her last argument against the Cause of the Notebooks.
“If you don’t believe me, look at what Roberto Herrera, lawyer for one of those ‘repentant’, said,” Cristina wrote and cited a statement by the lawyer in TN about Manzanares: “When he testified, he was in a place of detention that is Cavia, for 28 or 30 days, in a place where he was isolated from everyone with a 24-hour spotlight.” The former president returned to the charge: “This is no longer lawfare: it is political persecution with methods typical of dictatorships.”
Herrera, who also functions as spokesperson for Manzanares, who for family reasons prefers to keep a low profile, had to explain himself. “It made me very sad that the former president compared this situation that happened to Manzanares with the darkest period of our country,” he indicated after Cristina’s tweet. “It’s clearly not true. The agreement was already closed, I didn’t need anything else to talk about,” he concluded.
It was not the first time that Herrera felt the pressure of working on the most important corruption cases in the country. Not even the most violent: in March 2020 he reported that they shot at his car from a motorcycle when he arrived at the house of his daughter’s mother. “Be careful what they are going to talk about Lazarus. Don’t act stupid,” they told him. Immediately afterwards, one of them pointed it at the fender of his Audi A4, fired the trigger and fled. The bullet hole remained in the sheet metal, as a reminder of the seriousness of the files it moves.
Upward career. Due to his training, in any case, Herrera is not an easy lawyer to intimidate. He was born in Villa Celina, in La Matanza. His first study was in Mataderos, followed by an office in Tapiales until he obtained the upgrade: today he has an office in the World Trade Center II in Puerto Madero.
He is 53 years old. He began studying law in 2000 at the University of Morón and was only able to graduate in 2016, but that was not an impediment to forming his study. Even without the degree hanging on the wall, he had a firm of seven lawyers working for him long before he graduated.
He became a kind of legal entrepreneur by chance. Or by search. His acquaintances, kids who stole in the vicinity of the Central Market, learned that Roberto de Villa Celina was studying law and started calling him. He could have referred them, but he didn’t: he hired his criminal law professor and they were filled with cases. Small amounts, but many. It was his first foray into the courts.
“I don’t know how I got here,” he often tells his clients as a joke. And not so jokingly. Herrera went, in a couple of decades, from being a street vendor to being involved in the most renowned causes in the country. “I sold strings of garlic on the street. I spent all of them,” he adds when asked about the pressure that the former president and company may exert on him.
While Manzanares and Fariña have been released, now the greatest concern is about Leandro Báez. Lázaro’s youngest son is headed to an oral trial at the beginning of 2026 for a million-dollar wool purchase that disappeared. The detail: his father, Lázaro, tried to be a plaintiff against him, but Justice did not allow it.
His fame increased since the Ruta del Dinero K and the Cuadernos Cause. His appearances in the media mean new clients. But he justifies his success with effort. “If I catch you, I will defend you tooth and nail,” he promises. This is what he claims to be doing with his infamous clients.
