Justice asks for the first time a prison sentence for Cristina Kirchner for millionaire fraud to the State

The Argentine justice led this Monday to an unprecedented situation to

, twice president of the country and current vice president, with a request for prison sentences and disqualification from holding public office by prosecutors who investigated a broad plot of corruption between the years 2003 and 2015.

"It is the greatest corruption maneuver that has ever been known in the country," said prosecutor Diego Luciani in an extensive statement that he anticipated would culminate in the claim of a severe prison sentence for Fernández de Kirchner, 69, in addition to the veto to exercise public office.

Luciani has spent three weeks unraveling accusations and evidence in an oral and public trial that occupies ample space in the Argentine media and is being followed with great interest by a large part of the population: those who want to see the former president convicted and those who allege that everything is about a political conspiracy against the Peronist leader.

It all started in 2003

, assured the prosecutor on August 1, the first day of his plea.

, 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 overprices of 65%, 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 was extensive, and the criminal figure is illicit association and fraud to the public administration.

Luciani maintains that the vice president was

"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 insisted this Monday on the premises that he presented three weeks ago.

"

the rule of law lagged behind, and this must be restored with a fair sentence (...). An authentic and effective system of institutional corruption has been created through manipulation mechanisms of public contracting ( ...) Officials who agreed to this system were appointed and kept in key positions."

"Public order has been subverted, directed by nothing more and nothing less than the then president and her ministers as executors," he added.

Kirchner's last (useless) maneuvers

It is the first time that prison sentences have been requested in Argentine justice for Fernández de Kirchner, one of the most powerful political leaders in the country's history.

The vice president tried days ago to appeal to the prosecutors and one of the judges with the intention that they be replaced and that the process be extended, but the requests were rejected.

This Monday she surprised with a new maneuver: she asked to expand her investigative statement, which was already made months ago, alleging that "due to the lack of evidence" to accuse her, the prosecutors "assembled" new issues that they had never before reproached her for.

The procedural maneuver is certainly original and unsettled the Federal Oral Court, in which there is no recollection that anything similar has ever been authorized, when the stage of pleadings and claiming sentences is already closing.

"The prosecutors, in open violation of the principle of defense at trial, mounted issues in their accusation that had never been raised. For this reason, I have instructed my lawyer so that, in order to be able to effectively exercise my right to defense at trial, request the expansion of my preliminary statement for the hearing tomorrow, August 23," wrote the former head of state on her social networks.

The

, although Fernández de Kirchner still has a chance to speak, at the time of the "last words" before sentencing, which is expected in December.

The intensification of judicial problems comes in especially complex weeks for Fernández de Kirchner, who is probably going through her weakest political moment since coming to power with her husband in 2003.

The vice president again cut off the dialogue with the president,

, and Sergio Massa, the new economy minister, moves in power with the pretense of a prime minister.

For the first time in her career, the former president finds no alternatives to the political mess: her greatest concern is the fact that she is increasingly cornered by justice.

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