With less than two weeks left until she leaves power, Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner received very bad news this Tuesday: the justice system reviewed a previous decision and reopened a case against him for money laundering.
The cause is popularly known as “the K money route”, a money laundering worth 55 million dollars. In June, the two-time president had been acquitted, but the Federal Chamber of Buenos Aires decided to reopen the investigation and return it to the judge who had closed it, Sebastián Casanello.
Lázaro Báez was sentenced to ten years in prison for this case. Báez received a large part of the public works contracts during the Kirchnerist governments and is designated by the justice system as a front man for the former president and her husband and former president Néstor, who died in 2010.
“Without accusation there is no criminal process possible,” the judge had argued in June in response to the decision of the prosecutor in the case, Guillermo Marijuan, not to accuse the former president. The prosecutor’s abstention and the judge’s decision derived from the fact that two plaintiffs representing the State, the Financial Information Unit (UIF) and the Federal Public Revenue Administration (AFIP), They had withdrawn from the case.
The UIF and AFIP had presented themselves as plaintiffs during the government of Mauricio Macri, but withdrew during that of the Peronist Alberto Fernández.