Argentine ex-president Cristina Kirchner loses appeal against six-year prison sentence

Argentina’s Supreme Court has upheld the fraud conviction against Cristina Kirchner, bringing the curtain down on the career of one of the country’s most polarising leaders.

Former Argentine president Cristina Kirchner waves to supporters in November 2024 in Buenos Aires. Picture: Getty Images

Argentina’s Supreme Court on Tuesday (local time) upheld the fraud conviction of former president Cristina Kirchner, for which she received a six-year prison sentence and was banned for life from holding public office.

“The sentences handed down by the previous courts were based on the abundance of evidence produced,” the Supreme Court wrote in its ruling, adding that Kirchner’s leave to further appeal her conviction “is dismissed”.

The ruling makes 72-year-old Kirchner’s conviction and sentence definitive. The decision brings the curtain down on the career of one of Argentina’s most polarising leaders, who has loomed large over the South American country’s political landscape for two decades, inspiring admiration on the left but revulsion on the right.

Due to her age, she can potentially avoid jail by requesting to serve her sentence under house arrest. Kirchner has five days to turn herself over to the authorities.

Former Argentine president Cristina Kirchner waves to supporters after the Supreme Court upheld the fraud conviction for which she received a six-year prison sentence and was banned from holding public office for life. Picture: AFP

Her arch-foe, libertarian President Javier Milei, welcomed the ruling. “Justice. End,” he wrote on X.

Kirchner was convicted in 2022 of fraudulent administration relating to the granting of public works tenders during her 2007-15 presidency.

The case, she claims, is part of a political plot to scupper her career and unravel her legacy of protectionist economics and social programs.

She is the second ex-leader since Argentina’s transition from dictatorship to democracy in 1983 to be sentenced to prison after Carlos Saul Menem, who was given a seven-year sentence in 2013 for weapons trafficking.

Menem never served jail time because he had immunity from prosecution as a senator.

Addressing hundreds of supporters outside the headquarters of her centre-left Justicialist party, Kirchner called the three Supreme Court judges “puppets acting on orders from above” – an apparent allusion to Milei’s government.

Her supporters took to the streets of several Argentine cities, burning tires and cutting off some roads leading to Buenos Aires.

“The sentence was already written” before her appeal, Kirchner claimed, calling her conviction “a badge of political, personal and historical dignity.” Some in the crowd wept while others hugged each other.

Daniel Dragoni, a councillor from Kirchner’s party, told AFP he was “destroyed” by the ruling but vowed the former president’s left-wing Peronist movement “will return, as always.”

Kirchner rose to prominence as part of a political power couple with her late husband Nestor Kirchner, who preceded her as president.

After two terms at the helm herself between 2007 and 2015, she served as vice president from 2019 to 2023 in the last centre-left administration before Milei took power.

Milei’s election was seen as a widespread rejection of the Kirchners’ nationalist Peronist movement, which was accused of widespread corruption and economic mismanagement.

Over the past two years, Kirchner has been one of the fiercest critics of Milei’s deep cuts to public spending and deregulation.

Before Tuesday’s ruling, she had been planning to run for a seat in the Buenos Aires provincial legislature in September elections. Had she won, she would have gained immunity from prosecution.

On the left the threat of her arrest led to a rare display of unity. But historian Sergio Berensztein said he believed the mobilisation for her release would be short-lived.

“Cristina today has limited leadership; she is not the Cristina of 2019,” he told AFP.

Kirchner supporters rally outside her home in Buenos Aires on Tuesday after the Supreme Court’s decision. Picture: AFP

Lara Goyburu, a political scientist at the University of Buenos Aires, saw the ruling as a win for Milei, who promised on his election to root out “kirchnerismo” as Argentines refer to Kirchner’s brand of protectionist, sometimes populist politics.

Kirchner was accused of arranging, as president, for a business associate of her and her late husband to win dozens of contracts for public works in her southern stronghold of Patagonia.

Her sentence had already been upheld by a lower court of appeal in 2024. The initial call by prosecutors for her to be jailed sparked demonstrations in several cities in 2022, some of which ended in clashes with police.

The following month, she survived a botched assassination attempt when a man shoved a revolver in her face and pulled the trigger – but the gun did not fire.

The gunman said he acted out of frustration with corruption. In March, the United States banned her and one of her former ministers from entering the country, accusing them of corruption. “They (her political opponents) want me in prison or dead,” Kirchner herself has repeatedly claimed.

AFP