“They can’t prove anything they accuse me of,” the head of state from 2007 to 2015 said in her closing speech in court in Buenos Aires on Tuesday. “When I first spoke, I said that the court bends the law for political reasons. I think I was generous then. In reality, it is a real firing squad.” Prosecutors are demanding 12 years in prison and a lifelong disqualification from public office.
The 69-year-old and her late husband, ex-president Néstor Kirchner, would have been awarded government contracts for a friendly contractor without a tender. According to the prosecutor’s office, his company received 80 percent of all public road construction contracts in Santa Cruz, Kirchner’s home region. Some of the outrageous construction costs later flowed back to the couple. As the leader of a criminal organization, the current vice president stole about a billion dollars from the state.
Current President Alberto Fernández joined his deputy. “When politics takes hold in the courts, justice flees through the windows,” he wrote on Twitter. The verdict will be handed down on December 6. It can be challenged in the Supreme Court. It could be years before a final verdict is reached.
(SDA)