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A Trump-allied legislator asks Biden to investigate Cristina Kircher and Máximo for corruption

2023-03-29T18:07:14.814Z


Before the Biden-Fernández summit, the ultra-conservative Ted Cruz presented a project to Congress to analyze whether Argentine officials can be sanctioned


Hours before the bilateral meeting between President Alberto Fernández and Joe Biden at the White House, Republican Senator Ted Cruz presented a bill

to the US Congress to demand that the Government investigate

Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, his son, for corruption.

Máximo and other Kirchner officials to establish a possible sanction.

Cruz, an ultra-conservative legislator and ally of former President Donald Trump, is a member of the Senate Relations Committee and in the project also calls for the investigation of Deputy Justice Minister Juan Martín Mena, Senator Oscar Parrilli and Argentine Treasury prosecutor Carlos Zannini.

“Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is a deeply corrupt politician

who has undermined Argentina's rule of law and its political institutions.

The evidence against him is public, credible, and supported by Argentine courts," Cruz argued in a press release about the initiative.

The legislative initiative is based on the sentence that the former president received in the Highway case at the end of last year.

“In December 2022, Fernández de Kirchner was sentenced by an Argentine federal court for overseeing, with the help of her son, daughter and associates,

an elaborate bribery and kickback scheme

that defrauded the Argentine people of billions of dollars. pesos," Cruz said.

The senator warned that "beyond Argentina, both Cristina Kirchner and her associates

have undermined US security interests in the region

by putting Argentine institutions at the service of Iran's campaign of global terrorism and continue to do so."


It is not the first time that Cruz has asked to punish the vice president for corruption.

Last year, the Republican senator addressed a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken asking the State Department to impose corruption sanctions on Fernández de Kirchner and his immediate family members.

The legislator wants the vice president and her direct relatives to be sanctioned in the same way that the State Department punished, last year, the former president of Ecuador, Abdalá Jaime Bucaram Ortiz, and the vice president of Paraguay, Hugo Velázquez, for corruption.

These officials and their families had their visas canceled to enter the United States.

The Treasury could also impose economic sanctions such as freezing funds in the US if it deems it necessary.

At the time, the government reacted by saying that Cruz was “ignorant” – according to what Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero wrote in a tweet – and Ambassador Jorge Argüello said that the voice of that legislator is marginal and that he does not represent the opinion of Congress.

At that time, the State Department only said that it respected the different branches of government that act "independently."

Cruz's request was joined this time by Congresswoman

María Elvira Salazar,

chair of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC), which will lead the legislation in the lower house of Congress.

“Cristina Fernández and her inner circle are some of the most prolific embezzlers of public funds in Latin America.

It is time for the United States to take action against its unchecked abuse of power, which has resulted in the theft and loss of billions of dollars belonging to the Argentine people," Salazar said in the press release issued by the office of Cross.

Congresswoman Salazar had also referred to the vice president in very harsh terms.

In a speech in Congress on February 28, she denounced that Fernández and the vice president were making a "devil's pact" due to the links between the Casa Rosada and China and the installation of an alleged Chinese base in the south of our country.

The Argentine government came out to respond to him through a letter from the ambassador in Washington, Jorge Arguello.

He did so through a letter, with a copy to all the members of the Foreign Relations Committee, in which he stated that "there is no infrastructure or military presence of an extra-regional power in Argentina, with the exception of those that correspond to the illegal occupation of the Malvinas Islands by the United Kingdom”.

The legislators' initiative, beyond raising the issue in the middle of the visit,

does not have much chance of success

given that President Biden sees Argentina as an ally in the region and has avoided referring to the vice president's causes.

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2023-03-29

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