Cristina Fernández de Kirchner returns to the bench

• Argentina Cristina Kirchner gets tired of Alberto Fernández and issues a public ultimatum: "That he honor the will of the Argentine people"

There she was, on the defendant's bench, designated as the head of a criminal association to keep the state money.

Who is she?

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, twice president and

, protagonist of an extraordinary start to the week in a country expectant before the unprecedented situation.

The second authority of the State continued smiling and humorous from his office of the presidency of the Senate the vehement and meticulous plea of ​​the prosecutor

.

The split screen showed the accuser and the accused.

It didn't matter that the vice president wasn't at the federal courthouse.

The image of prosecutor and defendant on equal terms, but above all Luciani's words, impacted Argentines, despite being a people accustomed to disbelieving the honesty of their political leadership.

It all started in 2003, the prosecutor assured.

And it continued until 2015, when Fernández de Kirchner left the Casa Rosada.

The Argentine justice is investigating irregularities in 51 public works that the companies of Lázaro Báez, owner of Austral Construcciones, received to develop in the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz, politically dominated by the Kirchners for almost three decades.

Contracts for billions of dollars with

, lack of technical capacity to carry out the works, rigged bids and full payment for the works despite the fact that most of them had not been completed: the list of accusations is extensive, and the criminal figure is illicit association and fraud to the public administration.

Luciani seeks to demonstrate that the vice president was the head of that illicit association while she was president.

"When Néstor Kirchner assumed the presidency of the Nation and then his wife, Cristina Fernández, they installed and maintained within the national and provincial administration of Santa Cruz one of the most extraordinary matrices of corruption that unfortunately and sadly have developed in the country," Luciani said at the start of an oral trial that is expected to close before the end of the year.

The sentence, a prison sentence, could be between five and 16 years

, although the vice president can appeal, and there is general agreement that everything will end up in the hands of the Supreme Court of Justice, which Fernández de Kirchner harshly criticizes from years ago.

Luciani, unknown to the majority of Argentines, claims to have all the evidence to convict the vice president.

And when he says all the evidence, he says a lot, because the prosecutor sent three tons of evidence to the headquarters of the federal courts.

Evidence that refers to the presidencies of Néstor (2003-2007) and Cristina Kirchner (2007-2015).

Báez was a cashier at the

branch where Néstor Kirchner had deposited his money during his years of power in the province, before becoming president: from modest employee to head of one of the most powerful construction groups in the country.

The situation, more than striking, became remarkably anomalous when Mauricio Macri assumed power on December 10, 2015, putting an end to the rule of Kirchnerism for four years: Baez abandoned all the works under his charge and his employees, many of whom They did not receive their salaries.

The Macri government took over those payments.

The vice president has not made her defense yet, since Luciani has several days ahead of exposure.

But Fernández de Kirchner and his lawyers have insistently developed the theory of "lawfare",

.

Luciani intends to demonstrate something very different: Báez was the man that the Kirchners used to enrich themselves, something of which there are very concrete indications: those who were private secretaries of Néstor and Cristina became amazing millionaires.

And Florencia, the vice president's daughter, was found with four million dollars in a safe deposit box.

Unlike her mother and her brother, Máximo, Florencia does not have parliamentary privileges.

Among the evidence is a statement by the current president, Alberto Fernández, and conversations between Cristina Kirchner and José López, the former secretary of Public Works, whom the police arrested one morning in 2016 while throwing

in a convent of nuns on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

Repentant, López is today a serious problem for the vice president.

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• Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner

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