Argentina’s Supreme Court has upheld a six-year prison sentence on corruption charges for former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
The ruling on Tuesday, which permanently bars the divisive 72-year-old from public office and makes her subject to arrest, prompted crowds of her supporters to block the streets of Buenos Aires in protest.
The left-wing former president denounced the ruling, claiming the court’s judges were acting in the service of the economically powerful.
“They’re three puppets answering to those ruling far above them,” she told supporters outside her party’s headquarters in Buenos Aires, in an apparent reference to the government of her rival, President Javier Milei.
“It’s the concentrated economic power of Argentina’s government.”
The ruling was welcomed by Milei, a libertarian fiercely opposed to Fernandez de Kirchner’s brand of high-spending politics, which critics blamed for years of economic volatility and soaring inflation.
“Justice. End,” he wrote on X.
‘Abundance of evidence’
Fernandez de Kirchner, who succeeded her husband Nestor Kirchner as president in 2007 and remained in power until 2015, had been found guilty by a federal court in 2022 of having directed irregular state public works contracts to a friend during her and her husband’s years in power.
She claimed the conviction was politically motivated and appealed to the Supreme Court.
But the judges rejected Fernandez de Kirchner’s appeal, writing in a resolution that her sentence did “nothing more than … protect our republican and democratic system”, The Associated Press news agency reported.
“The sentences handed down by the previous courts were based on the abundance of evidence produced,” the judges wrote, according to the AFP news agency.
The ruling makes her conviction and appeal definitive, and likely draws a line under her lengthy political career, just days after she launched her campaign for the Buenos Aires legislative elections in September.
The former president has five days to turn herself in to authorities, although her lawyer has requested she be able to serve her sentence under house arrest due to her age, the AP reported.
The threat of arrest mobilised the former president’s supporters around her. Daniel Dragoni, a councillor from Buenos Aires, told AFP he was “destroyed” by the ruling but promised that her left-wing political movement would “return, as always”.
But historian Sergio Berensztein told AFP he believed the calls for her release would be short-lived and have limited effect.
