federal prosecutor Diego Luciani will resume the final stretch of his argument today in the oral trial of the case roadin which the vice president Cristina Kirchner is accused along with a group of former officials of their governments and the Patagonian businessman Lazarus Baez, for directing public works in Santa Cruz. It is expected that today the presentation of evidence will be completed and then the sentence requests for the accused will be formulated.
Once the prosecutor has submitted the sentence requests, the Federal Oral Court 2 might dictate an intermediate room of up to ten business days for the lawyers of the 13 defendants to prepare their defense arguments, as he learned. THE NATION.
The prosecution anticipated on Friday that it will not charge as a member of the illicit association Carlos Santiago Kirchnerformer official of the Ministry of Planning and cousin of former President Néstor Kirchner, although he may eventually be charged with respect to the other crime being judged, which is fraud once morest the State.
In the last hearing, Luciani began to describe what behaviors of the accused prove that they were part of an illicit association created to steal millionaire public funds and argued why he considers that Cristina Kirchner was the head of said criminal group.
“The person who is revealed as the head of the illicit association is Cristina Fernández, who served as president of the Nation”said the prosecutor, and referred to the roles of Báez, the former Minister of Federal Planning July of Vidothe former Secretary of Public Works Jose Lopez and the former head of National Roads Nelson Periottiwho were identified as organizers of the illicit association.
Luciani rejected the theory of an alleged persecution once morest the vice president -the lawfare who brandishes Kirchnerism as a flag – and said that she intervened to illegally benefit businessman Báez. The prosecutor directed her exposure to demonstrate the depth of the bond between Báez and the Kirchners and exhibited a will from the year 2010 which, according to him, proves that Báez did not have the wealth in his name. He also recalled commercial operations shared by the businessman and the presidential couple and showed Báez’s income forms to the Olivos residence.
Before passing the word to the prosecutor Sergio MolaLuciani cited a 2014 exposition by Pope Francis on corruption: “The corrupt persecute those who contradict him,” he said. And he clarified that the then former Supreme Court Minister Raúl Zaffaroni adhered to these words.
In his presentation, prosecutor Mola alluded to the preliminary statements of Cristina Kirchner, De Vido, Periotti and Báez, who had denounced that the case was a case of lawfareand said that “such legal construction does not exist”.
The strength of the documentation presented plus the communications revealed and the vehemence of the allegation made by the prosecutor allow us to take it for granted that Luciani will ask for a harsh sentence for the vice president, Báez and the former officials involved.
Luciani did not advance the amount of the penalty that he will claim, but in court he is expected to request at least a few 10 to 12 years in prisonalthough there was no lack of those who raised that figure to 14 years in prisonconsidering the reputation of “hard” of the accuser.
The estimate arose from the consultation of THE NATION to long-experienced oral court judges and prosecutors (unrelated to the process) who have been following the trial. The sources took it for granted that, in addition to the request for a sentence of effective compliance, the prosecutor will claim for the vice president the Perpetual disqualification from holding public office and the confiscation of their assets up to a sum that will arise from the amount of the damage to the State that Luciani will also announce today.
If the court decides to convict Cristina Kirchner (the verdict would be known at the end of the year), the effective prison sentence will only be served if the ruling is final, that is, once it is reviewed by the Supreme Court, which takes years. The same applies to disqualification from holding public office, in the event that this punishment is imposed on him, so he would have no problem running for an elective position in 2023.
