Former president of Argentina Cristina Fernández de Kirchner gestures to supporters after the Supreme Court docket of Argentina confirmed her sentence to six years in jail for corruption and lifelong ban from public workplace.
Marcos Brindicci/Getty Pictures South America
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Marcos Brindicci/Getty Pictures South America
BOGOTA, Colombia — One in all Argentina’s strongest—and polarizing—political figures is heading to jail. Former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has been sentenced to six years for corruption and completely banned from holding public workplace.
Kirchner, 72, who led Argentina for 2 phrases from 2007 to 2015, was discovered responsible in 2022 of steering dozens of public works contracts throughout her presidency to a building firm owned by an in depth good friend. The case, one of the crucial high-profile corruption trials within the nation’s latest historical past, has sharply divided Argentines.
Kirchner and her legal professionals appealed the conviction, as her supporters launched massive protests—blocking roads and gathering exterior the Supreme Court docket in Buenos Aires. However on Tuesday, the Justices upheld each the sentence and the lifetime political ban.
In a decision supplied to the Related Press the judges stated the sentence “does nothing greater than to guard our republican and democratic system.”
Talking exterior the courtroom, Kirchner denounced the ruling as politically motivated, accusing the judges of “limiting the favored vote”. She had been planning a political comeback by working for native workplace—an elected place, that if she’d had received, would have granted the Peronist politician authorized immunity.
Even after leaving the presidency, Kirchner remained a dominant power in Argentine politics, serving as vp from 2019 to 2023.
The leftist politician has been a fierce critic of President Javier Milei’s administration and retains a loyal base that sees her conviction as an try to silence her. Hailed by her supporters as a champion of the poor, she was additionally blamed by critics for overseeing the nation’s unravelling financial troubles, together with hovering inflation.
President Milei took to social media to applaud the decision, with out mentioning the previous president by identify, writing in a put up on X, “Justice. Interval.”
Due to her age, Kirchner is prone to serve her sentence beneath home arrest, as allowed beneath Argentine regulation for defendants over 70.
