Argentina's VP Fernández is guilty of a $1B copy and brings half a decade

December 13, 2022: On Tuesday, Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández was convicted and condemned to six years in jail and a life ban from holding public office for a fabrication plan that appropriated $1 billion through public works projects in her presidency.

A three-judge panel located the Peronist leader guilty of fraud but denied a charge of running a criminal administration, for which the sentence could be 12 years in prison. It was the initial time an Argentine vice president had been convicted of a crime while in office.

Fernández lashed out at the verdict, which described herself as a “judicial mafia victim.” But she also later said that she would not run for in the coming year for the presidency, a post she held from 2007-2015.

The sentence is firm once appeals are decided, which could take years. She will remain immune from arrest, meanwhile.

Fernández’s supporters are vowing to paralyze the country with a nationwide strike. They stopped in downtown Buenos Aires and marched on the federal court building, which beat drums and shouted as they pressed against police barriers.

Fernández roundly renounced all the accusations. Argentina’s dominant leader this century, she is accused of improperly which grants public works contracts to a construction magnate tied to her family.

The verdict surely deepened fissures in South America, where politics and the 69-year-old populist leader are either liked or disliked.

President Alberto Fernández, who is related to his vice president, added on Twitter that she was not the culprit and that her conviction was “the result of a proper in which the minimum forms of because process were not taken care of.”

Prosecutors declared Fernández fraudulently made 51 public works projecting to Lázaro Báez, a building magnate and ally of her and her husband Nestor Kirchner, serving as president from 2003-2007 and died in 2010.

Báez and the people of Fernández’s 2007-2015 presidential administration were from a dozen different accused in the conspiracy. Most of the others got lesser sentences. The panel also convicted Báez, and her public working secretary, José López, for six years.

Prosecutors Diego Luciani and Sergio Mola added that the Báez company was made to embezzle earnings through improperly bid projects that mourned from cost overruns and, in numerous cases, were never completed. They added that the company disappeared following the Kirchners’ 12 years in power.