19 March 2019
Former president Cristina Kirchner over the fraudulent import of liquid gas.
Among the 10 charges brought against Kirchner, the most notable is the “corruption notebooks” scandal in which a driver had kept a notebook in which he noted that he had frequently carried bags filled with US dollars to several locations, including public buildings and even the personal house of Cristina Kirchner. Those bags would be payments for bribes. Several businessmen named in the notebooks were detained, and then confessed such payments to turn state’s evidence. They claimed that he Kirchners extorted them into paying bribes. Read more here.
She will face trial in which she is accused of having favoured businessman Lazaro Baez in the awarding of 52 public works contracts worth S$1.62 billion during her presidency. Baez’s BTP company secured large contracts in Santa Cruz province, where Nestor Kirchner served as governor for more than a decade.
Kirchner was president for successive terms from 2007 to 2015, and her late husband Nestor preceded her as president. She still has a support base in Argentina and hopes to stand in October’s presidential elections and is the closest rival to centre-right president Mauricio Macri. Press From reported.
Macri told journalist Luis Majul, “My father [Franco Macri] committed a crime, he was part of a system of extortion involving the Kirchnerite movement in which in order to work, you had to pay up.” Franco Macri was implicated in the “notebooks” corruption scandal, along with President Macri’s brother and cousin. Buenos Aires Times reported.
