FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

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Argentine Senate Okays Police Raid on Homes of Former President Fernández de Kirchner

Aug. 23, 2018 (EIRNS)—Yesterday, the Argentine Senate voted unanimously to allow police to raid three properties of former President and now Senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, including her home in Buenos Aires, purportedly to search for evidence that she was the mastermind of a giant corruption scheme, involving the alleged payment of hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to her personally during her term in office.

Fernández herself voted to authorize the searches, demanded by the sleazy Judge Claudio Bonadio, who is handling six corruption cases against her, arguing that police will find no “proof” because there is none. Today at noon, the federal police showed up in force outside her Buenos Aires apartment, and at her homes in El Calafate and Rio Gallegos in Patagonia, to begin the searches amidst a high-profile security deployment and media circus.

Fernández is accused of personally receiving bags of money from business executives to buy public works contacts during her Presidency, based on photocopies of notebooks kept by a former government chauffeur, who allegedly documented these transactions over years, but then burned the notebooks. Following the model of the U.S. Justice Department-run “Lava Jato” “anti-corruption” offensive in Brazil, the past three weeks have seen dozens of Argentine businessmen parading through Buenos Aires courts to “confess” to paying bribes and beg for plea bargains to stay out of jail.

In a scathing, 45-minute speech in the Senate yesterday, Fernández charged that this, and all the other cases against her, are merely examples of how the justice system is being used as an instrument of political persecution, as is happening in Brazil and Ecuador. Her only crime, she said, was implementing pro-development policies and protecting the welfare and living standards of Argentine citizens.