The reaction of the defense of Cristina Kirhchner, who is already thinking about the appeal: “This is what is called an arbitrary sentence”

“This is called an arbitrary sentence. People have what is called a presumption of innocence, even Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. said the lawyer Carlos Beraldi, in charge of the defense of the vice-president, after having read the reasons for the judgment which sentenced the vice-president to 6 years in prison. Cristina Fernández’s defense is already working on the appeal, amid strong questions.

It is that, at the discretion of the defence, the court itself begins the assessment of the evidence by specifying that it does not have direct evidence, but that it will condemn for alleged evidence. According to the agency the Webthe criticism in the appeal will relate to the use of a decree as an index point against him (Decree 54/2009 which modified a 2001 trust so that it returned to the National Roads Administration), the use of WhatsApp messages of the former Secretary of Public Works José López and also the analysis of the causes Hotesur and Los Sauces, the axis of supposed advantages that were the key to convicting the former president.

in dialogue with C5N, Beraldi said that “this is technically called arbitrary sentencing. The prosecutor must prove the accusation, but when there is no certainty, the court must pronounce the acquittal. Here they do the opposite. And he added that to the judges, “I would say with all due respect to them, is that they return to the faculty to study the basic principles that make criminal procedural law”. “They took as a first element a decree where the National Directorate of Roads is placed as the beneficiary of funds to carry out public works. There it was not said that this money goes to Báez. We explained everything at trial,” he said.

In 1,616 pages, the Federal Court explained why, on December 6, the vice president and eight other people were sentenced, including Lázaro Báez, the former secretary of public works Jose Lopezthe former head of the national roads directorate Nelson Periotti and five former Santa Cruz officials to terms ranging from six to three years in prison. The judges understood that they had committed the crime of fraudulent administration to the detriment of the administration in the delivery of 52 public works for the province to Báez companies. The former president was also sentenced to a life ban from holding public office. In addition, he ordered the confiscation of 84 billion pesos for what they understood to be the proceeds of crime.

“Cristina Elisabet Fernández de Kirchner, as head of the national executive power and by constitutional mandate supreme head of the nation, head of government and political head of the general administration of the country, had a fundamental intervention for the concretization of the crime” , says the TOF. “The tenor of his contributions to the lavish fraud committed, the preponderant scope it occupied to make the decisions essential to its execution, the unprecedented power it enjoyed to influence every corner of the state which interfered with the plan. The aforementioned self-interest that underpinned all the mechanisms put in place for the embezzlement of public funds, is the structure that allows us to conclude that his conduct was what represented the higher level of devaluation due to the fact in general“, explained the judges when placing the vice-president as the person most responsible for the maneuver.

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So for the court “Not even the maximum of the scale provided for the offense of aggravated fraudulent administration proves to be sufficient and adjusted to the degree of guilt which emerges from the trial of the reproach.” “And the impact of minimal possibly mitigating circumstances, stemming from his personal conditions (for example, his lack of convictions), does not present an exception capable of neutralizing the seriousness of what was analyzed,” they added.

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