Argentina’s VP Fernández guilty in $1 billion fraud, gets 6 years

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández was convicted and sentenced Tuesday to six years successful situation and a beingness prohibition from holding nationalist bureau for a fraud strategy that embezzled $1 cardinal done nationalist works projects during her presidency.

A three-judge sheet recovered the Peronist person blameworthy of fraud, but rejected a complaint of moving a transgression organization, for which the condemnation could person been 12 years successful prison. It was the archetypal clip an Argentine vice president has been convicted of a transgression portion successful office.

Fernández lashed retired astatine the verdict, describing herself arsenic the unfortunate of a "judicial mafia." But she besides aboriginal announced that she would not tally adjacent twelvemonth for the presidency, a station she antecedently held successful 2007-2015.

The condemnation isn't steadfast until appeals are decided, a process that could instrumentality years. She volition stay immune from apprehension meanwhile.

Fernández's supporters vowed to paralyze the state with a nationwide strike. They clogged downtown Buenos Aires and marched connected the national tribunal building, beating drums and shouting arsenic they pressed against constabulary barriers.

Fernández roundly denied each the accusations. Argentina's ascendant person this century, she was accused of improperly granting nationalist works contracts to a operation magnate intimately tied to her family.

The verdict is definite to deepen fissures successful the South American nation, wherever authorities tin beryllium a humor athletics and the 69-year-old populist person is either loved oregon hated.

President Alberto Fernández, who is not related to his vice president, said connected Twitter that she was guiltless and that her condemnation is "the effect of a proceedings successful which the minimum forms of owed process were not taken attraction of."

Prosecutors said Fernández fraudulently directed 51 nationalist works projects to Lázaro Báez, a operation magnate and aboriginal state of her and her hubby Nestor Kirchner, who served arsenic president successful 2003-2007 and died abruptly successful 2010.

Báez and members of Fernández's 2007-2015 statesmanlike medication were among a twelve others accused successful the conspiracy. The sheet besides sentenced Báez and her nationalist works secretary, José López, to six years. Most of the others got lesser sentences.

Prosecutors Diego Luciani and Sergio Mola said the Báez institution was created to embezzle revenues done improperly bid projects that suffered from outgo overruns and successful galore cases were ne'er completed. The institution disappeared aft the Kirchners' 12 years successful power, they said.

In Argentina, judges successful specified cases customarily pronounce verdicts and sentences archetypal and explicate however they reached their determination later. The panel's afloat determination is expected successful February. After that, the verdict tin beryllium appealed up to the Supreme Court, a process that could instrumentality years.

Fernández went connected her YouTube transmission to accidental she volition not question further bureau aft her vice statesmanlike word expires connected Dec. 10, 2023. "I'm not going to beryllium a campaigner for anything, not president, not for senator. My sanction is not going to beryllium connected immoderate ballot. I decorativeness connected December 10 and spell home," she said.

Politicians and analysts had noted that until her entreaty is settled, Fernández would beryllium escaped to tally for immoderate elected bureau — from a spot successful Congress to the presidency — and get immunity apprehension by being elected.

"Cristina ever surprises," pollster Roberto Bacman, manager of Argentina's Center for Public Opinion Studies, said of her announcement. But "she volition proceed fighting," helium added. "She places herself successful the halfway of the combat and says that she is not going to hide."

He said it remains to beryllium seen if the Peronist assemblage seeks to propulsion Fernández to reconsider her decision.

Patricio Giusto, manager of the consulting steadfast Diagnóstico Político, predicted Fernández volition deepen her "strategy of victimization and equating herself" with Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, the leftist person who has conscionable been elected president of Brazil aft a tribunal overturned his situation condemnation for corruption.

During the judicial process, the vice president called herself a unfortunate of "lawfare" and characterized the Judiciary arsenic a pawn of the absorption media and blimpish person Mauricio Macri, who succeeded her arsenic president successful 2015-2019.

Fernández remains the singular person of the leftist faction of the Peronist movement. Bacman said his surveys amusement 62% of Argentines privation her removed and 38% enactment her nary substance what.

Meanwhile, different cases stay pending against her, including a complaint of money-laundering that besides involves her lad and daughter.