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EL CHALTÉN, Argentina — Alongside a teeth-chattering highway that cuts throughout southern Argentina, a vibrant blue billboard stood out towards the huge Patagonian steppe. It introduced that the Route 288 highway undertaking, which on the time price round 572 million Argentine pesos, or about $119 million, could be accomplished in 2016.
Six years later, there’s extra gravel than pavement and the sound of crickets is louder than the rumble of automobile engines.
That highway and different unfinished highways prefer it now threaten Argentina’s strongest and well-known politician, whose leftist model of politics has dominated the nation for twenty years.
On Tuesday, the decision within the case of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina’s former president and present vice chairman, is anticipated to be determined by a panel of three judges on expenses of aggravated fraud and directing an “illicit affiliation” that oversaw a kickbacks scheme tied to development tasks.
Mrs. Kirchner is accused of steering lots of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} of taxpayer-funded contracts to a enterprise affiliate and household good friend to construct roads on this distant nook of Patagonia, on the tip of South America — tasks that usually went unfinished or went drastically over price range.
Federal prosecutors are looking for 12 years in jail for Mrs. Kirchner and to bar her from holding public workplace, although even when she is discovered responsible, she’s going to be capable of attraction the decision and run within the meantime. Argentina’s subsequent presidential elections are scheduled subsequent yr, although Mrs. Kirchner has not mentioned whether or not she intends to run.
The trial is the most recent blow for Mrs. Kirchner, who has been investigated on roughly a dozen expenses, principally associated to corruption, although 4 circumstances have been dismissed and she or he has been acquitted in two others. However no investigation had ever made it to trial — till this one.
A conviction may ship probably the most dramatic blow to her credibility but and reinforce the problem she already faces interesting to a wider viewers.
Mrs. Kirchner has spent 30 years within the public eye, together with as a primary woman, president and presently as a senator and the vice chairman. She is a deeply polarizing determine who has helped cut up Argentina between those that favor her and her leftist motion, referred to as Kirchnerismo, and people who say she has helped spoil a rustic that has struggled, whatever the authorities in energy, with excessive inflation, poverty and failed financial insurance policies.
She has repeatedly denied all expenses and in remaining remarks to the panel of judges final week, she referred to as the tribunal a “firing squad.”
“They slandered, lied and insulted me and our authorities,” she mentioned.
She additionally claimed that the trial set the stage for the assassination try towards her in September, when a person pushed by an illustration outdoors her house in Buenos Aires, pointed a gun at her head and pulled the set off, although the gun didn’t hearth.
Two folks have been charged with tried murder, and a 3rd individual is accused of serving to them.
A responsible verdict towards the vice chairman may feed both narrative, mentioned Lucas Romero, a political scientist and director of the Buenos Aires public opinion agency Synopsis Consultants.
“Those that criticize her and have a adverse picture of her, effectively, they’ll affirm what they already suspected: She is responsible, she is corrupt,” he mentioned. “And those that observe her, sympathize along with her, those that have a really intense affection for her, they’ll say this confirms that they’re persecuting her.”
That divide is obvious within the Patagonian village of El Chaltén, the place the inhabitants of 1,700 was meant to profit from the unfinished highway tasks tied to Mrs. Kirchner’s case.
Dante Ardenghi, 65, an area physician, mentioned he believes that the media and opposition events fabricated or exaggerated allegations towards Mrs. Kirchner to deliver down her political motion.
What they actually imagine, he mentioned, is that leftist presidents “shouldn’t exist in South America.”
However Luis Ledesma, 59, a substitute high-school instructor, says he thinks the Kirchners had been corrupt.
“Everybody who obtained near or was allied indirectly to the interior circle of those folks grew to become wealthy in a really brief time,” he mentioned. “We’re speaking about secretaries, chauffeurs.”
Throughout Patagonia, the unfinished roads are taking their toll. Antonio Flauzino, a Brazilian motorbiker on a 3,300-mile journey by Argentina, fell off his bike on one other unpaved freeway. It was his first accident of his two-week journey.
“I had heard tales, folks mentioned this half was very onerous,” he mentioned. Motorcyclists name the stretch of gravel highway “the cursed 73 kilometers” due to its situation and the high-speed winds within the area.
“However I didn’t assume it could be this difficult,” he mentioned.
The purported kickbacks scheme that Mrs. Kirchner is accused of overseeing occurred within the province of Santa Cruz in the course of the 12 years that the Kirchners had been within the presidency: Mrs. Kirchner’s late husband, Néstor Kirchner, served from 2003 to 2007 and Mrs. Kirchner from 2007 to 2015.
Santa Cruz has all the time been their political stronghold: Mr. Kirchner was born within the capital, Rio Gallegos, and served as governor of the province between 1991 and 2003. His sister, Alicia Kirchner, is the governor at present.
Twelve different individuals are additionally accused within the corruption case together with Lázaro Báez, the Kirchner affiliate who obtained the roadworks contracts, and two former Kirchnerista authorities ministers who’ve been convicted in different corruption circumstances.
Mr. Báez is presently serving a 12-year sentence for cash laundering in a separate case. One of many ministers, José López, a former public works secretary, was caught on video attempting to stash duffel luggage stuffed with $9 million in money, Rolex watches and a semiautomatic rifle in a convent in 2016 in an unrelated case.
The main focus of Mrs. Kirchner’s trial has largely been 51 roadworks contracts that had been awarded to firms linked to Mr. Báez, who went from being a financial institution worker in Santa Cruz to forming a development firm within the days earlier than Mr. Kirchner grew to become president in 2003. The prosecution mentioned that from 2003 to 2015 the alleged scheme defrauded the Argentine state of greater than 5 billion pesos, or about $926 million, in keeping with officers.
The contracts had been typically awarded at inflated costs, went over price range or granted different particular issues, in keeping with the prosecution. Virtually half of the highway tasks had been by no means completed.
“These had been systematic acts of corruption promoted and maintained by the very best political leaders within the nation,” mentioned Diego Luciani, the lead prosecutor, throughout his closing remarks earlier this yr.
The proof introduced in the course of the trial included WhatsApp messages between Mr. López, the ex-public works secretary, Mr. Báez and the president of considered one of his development firms.
The prosecution mentioned the messages revealed a plan to cover proof within the waning days of the Kirchner administration in 2015, by delivering remaining funds on contracts to Mr. Báez, shedding his workers and abandoning roadworks tasks.
Some messages embrace references to “La Señora” who needed to “make selections.” The prosecution contended that “La Señora” was a reference to Mrs. Kirchner, although she was by no means talked about by title.
Even when convicted by this court docket, Mrs. Kirchner is not going to go to jail on Tuesday, mentioned Andrés Gil Dominguez, an Argentine constitutional lawyer. She has a number of avenues of attraction nonetheless out there and, as a sitting member of Congress, enjoys immunity from arrest. Even with out an attraction, she would in all probability not serve jail time, since Argentina permits folks over the age of 70 to serve out their sentence at dwelling. Mrs. Kirchner is 69 years previous.
Mrs. Kirchner’s supporters have already prompt that they’d protest if she is convicted. “Once they learn out Cristina’s conviction, hundreds of us should go on the streets all around the nation to deliver it to an institutional standstill,” mentioned Luis D’Elia, the top of a corporation representing the unemployed, in a radio interview.
The vice chairman has confronted a number of different judicial battles and has emerged victorious in a few of them.
Final yr, a court docket dismissed expenses towards her over accusations that she conspired to cowl up Iran’s purported position within the 1994 bombing of a Jewish group middle in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 folks. The accusations towards Mrs. Kirchner had been first made in 2015 by a prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, who was discovered useless of a gunshot wound in his house days later.
His demise was by no means solved, and the matter has been a supply of frenzied hypothesis and political infighting ever since.
A separate case that accused her of defrauding the federal government by the greenback futures market was dismissed final yr.
Ana Lankes reported from El Chaltén, Argentina, and Natalie Alcoba from Buenos Aires.
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