The Prosecutor's Office asks for 12 years in prison and lifelong disqualification for Cristina Kirchner for alleged corruption

The vice president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, participates in a legislative debate as head of the Senate, last March.AGUSTIN MARCARIAN (Reuters)

It has been a black day for Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

Prosecutor Diego Luciani has requested this Monday against her, after nine days of reading allegations, 12 years in prison and lifelong disqualification from holding public office for considering her head of "the greatest corruption maneuver known in the country."

The vice president has asked as a last resort to extend her statement this Tuesday, a maneuver that the court will reject as time-barred, to repeat that the investigation that she faces of her only seeks to remove her from the political career.

The sentence request is the climax of the so-called “highway cause”, in which Kirchner and 12 other defendants are accused of diverting funds from public works to enrich themselves.

Now begins the final stage of the oral trial, with the reading of the defense arguments.

Kirchner is accused of being the head of an illicit association created to extract funds from the National State "from the top of power."

Luciani has said that the vice president "could not not know" what was happening under her command.

Her greatest effort was to provide evidence on this point.

To do this, she spread WhatsApp messages during her allegations where the defendants mention the then president giving the go-ahead to this or that contract.

The prosecutor referred to an “extraordinary” corruption structure.

And he detailed an oiled mechanism where businessman Lázaro Báez, today sentenced to 12 years in prison for money laundering, received million-dollar public works contracts in the province of Santa Cruz, the political cradle of Kirchnerism, in exchange for returns.

“We are facing a crime of extreme gravity.

The defendants, in a strict separation of roles, stole fruits from the treasury for personal gain, adopting all necessary measures to do so with impunity and deactivating all control mechanisms.

Corruption was the rule;

an effective system of institutional corruption was created”, said the prosecutor at the close of a particularly harsh and highly political accusation.

For nine days, Luciani made an effort to prove Kirchner's responsibility, and placed her at the head of an alleged illicit association created during the mandate of her husband, Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and continued under her government.

Prosecutor Luciani estimated at 1,000 million dollars the damage caused to the State through 51 road works contracts delivered to Austral Construcciones, a company founded by Lázaro Báez, an unknown bank employee who became a millionaire in a few months.

As arguments for the alleged fraud, the prosecution said that Báez's assets grew 12,000% between 2004 and 2015 and that of his company 46,000%.

During the three presidencies of Kirchnerism, Báez only had the State as a client;

while his fortune multiplied, he entered into a score of private business agreements with the Kirchner family.

Sitting on the bench are also the former Minister of Public Works Julio de Vido and the secretary of the same portfolio, José López.

De Vido is in prison for his responsibility in the so-called Once tragedy, a railway accident under his command that in 2012 left 52 dead in the heart of Buenos Aires.

Prosecutor Luciani requested this Tuesday for De Vido 10 years in prison for "aggravated illicit association."

José López, meanwhile, was caught red-

in 2016 when he tried to hide nine million dollars in seven bags in a convent.

He is in prison for that crime, and the prosecutor has now requested another 10 years against him.

In 2019, a court sentenced López to six years in prison.

Luciani found no extenuating circumstances for any of them.

He especially charged against Cristina Kirchner, whom he considered "one of the main beneficiaries of the crimes committed."

She “she held the highest position and used her powers and her leadership power over the rest of the defendants in pursuit of profit.

I do not find a single mitigating factor for the serious crimes committed, ”he said.

During the nine days of reading the arguments, the former president tried to remove the prosecutor Luciani and one of the three judges of the court, Rodríguez Giménez Uriburu, from the trial.

It was based on a photo released by the press that shows both as regular participants in the soccer tournaments that former president Mauricio Macri organizes in

, his weekend home.

"Everything matches everything," Kirchner wrote on the networks, and showed the photo as proof that there was a "personal friendship" between judge and prosecutor.

She was unsuccessful and this Monday she had to listen to how Luciani asked for jail for her and the rest of the defendants.

The Vialidad cause is the one that most complicates the vice president.

She is not afraid of jail, because in December she will already be 70 years old and, in the worst case, she will be placed under house arrest.

She also has privileges as vice president that she can only lose through impeachment.

She fears, however, the request for her perpetual disqualification, a decision that would leave her out of the political race.

Next year there are presidential elections in Argentina and her name is never ruled out in the lists of Peronist candidates.

The reaction of Peronism to the closure of the allegations has been, as never before, one of unity.

The president, Alberto Fernández, and Cristina Kirchner do not speak to each other, but the ministers, governors and mayors of the coalition coincided the day before with messages repudiating any conviction against the political leader of the movement.

The reading of Peronism, both Kirchnerist and non-Kirchnerist, is that the ultimate goal of the road cause is the political banning of Kirchner.

They remember the one that Juan Domingo Perón, founder of Peronism, suffered for almost 20 years.

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