Catching up with full-time defendant Cristina Kirchner

Here at Useful Stooges we’ve spent a lot of time covering the misadventures of former Argentinian president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

We’ve examined economist Joseph Stiglitz’s intimate (and profitable) relationship with the Kirchner clan. We’ve pondered hedge funder Kyle Bass’s foolish championing of Cristina’s disastrous economic polities. Then there’s Wall Street hotshot Georges Ugeux, who blamed Argentina’s fiscal problems not on Kirchner corruption but on the country’s sovereign-debt creditors. And economist Mark Weisbrot, who looked at an Argentina headed for financial disaster and proclaimed that it was doing “remarkably well.”

We met Kirchner crony José Francisco López, who was turned in to the cops by a bunch of nuns who caught him trying to throw plastic bags stuffed with crookedly acquired cash over their convent wall.

On December 17, 2015, we congratulated Argentina on electing as its new president the candidate who was not Cristina’s chosen successor. And on December 31, 2016, we celebrated New Year’s Eve by noting that a federal judge, Julian Ercolini, had ordered Cristina put on trial for corruption, along with her former Planning Minister, Julio de Vido, and her former state secretary for public buildings, the above-named José Francisco López.

That was the last time we checked in with Cristina. Since then, the former President has been a full-time professional defendant. On March 23 of this year, another judge, Claudio Bonadino, also ordered her to stand trial, this time for instructing her country’s central bank “to sell dollar futures at artificially low prices, causing Argentina to lose hundreds of millions. Also indicted was her former Economy Minister, Axel Kicillof. In April she racked up her fourth criminal charge, this one for engaging in real-estate transactions for the purpose of money laundering. On that occasion her passport was confiscated, and her two children, Florencia and Maximo, were also indicted.

In June, in a desperate effort to acquire immunity from prosecution, she filed to run for Senate as the candidate of a new party she had founded just for that purpose. In the August elections, despite her massive corruption record, she actually won. At an October inquiry, Cristina “defended a secret pact negotiated by her government with the Iranian regime in 2011. And in November, her former VP, Amado Boudou, was arrested on charges of embezzlement and illicit association.

Now, despite her senatorial immunity, it may soon be Cristina’s turn to sample prison food. On December 7, Judge Bonadino asked the Senate to waive her immunity and allow her to be arrested and tried on charges of treason. The specific crime: covering up Iran’s role in the fatal 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires. We’ll see what happens. Non-fans of the Kirchner clan may again have reason to celebrate on New Year’s Eve.

Posted on December 11, 2017December 12, 2017 by usefulstooges 0

Cristina’s Christmas present

cristina-kirchner-3 — Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Well, it’s happened again. On Tuesday, a federal judge in Argentina, Julian Ercolini, ordered a trial of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was president of that country from 2007 to 2015, on charges of corruption.

Also ordered to face trial were Julio de Vido, Kirchner’s sometime Minister of Federal Planning, and José Francisco López, former state secretary for public buildings.

According to the indictment, all three former officials are accused of forming an illegal association that was “created to commit crimes” involving the theft of “funds that were assigned to road works” – specifically, 52 projects in Santa Cruz province, where Kirchner’s late husband, Néstor Kirchner, served as governor before preceding her as president.

Already in court is contractor Lázaro Báez, whose company Austral Construcciones profited from the corruption scheme. Austral, it is reported, received over $4 billion in road-construction contracts from the Kirchner administration; of that amount, about $1 billion is estimated to have constituted illegal surcharges.

Judge Ercolini also froze $893 million in Kirchner’s personal assets.

kiciliff — Cristina Kirchner with Axel Kiciloff

It’s the second time this has happened since she left office: in May, Kirchner, along with her former Economy Minister Axel Kiciloff and former Central Bank head Alejandro Vanoli, was indicted on charges of making illegal contracts to sell U.S. dollars at below market rates, supposedly with an eye to strengthening the peso. Instead of helping the Argentinian economy, these hijinks are said to have damaged it.

DYN15, BUENOS AIRES 04/09/06, EL SECRETARIO DE OBRAS PUBLICAS, JOSE LOPEZ DURANTE LA 1(TM) SESION PLENARIA DEL XV CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL "LOS LIMITES DE LA RESPONSABILIDAD SOCIAL DE LA EMPRESA", ESTA MA-ANA EN LA FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS ECONOMICAS DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE BUENOS AIRES (UBA).FOTO:DYN/LUCIANO THIEBERGER. — José Francisco López

Inveterate readers of this site may recall that López, a longtime crony of Nestor Kirchner and “right-hand man” to de Vido, was arrested in June while trying to hide plastic bags full of money at a Buenos Aires convent. In addition to the plastic bags, he had a suitcase full of money, and he had driven these bags and suitcase to the convent in a car whose trunk was also full of money. The total stash: about $7 million dollars in the form of U.S. dollars, euros, yen, and other denominations. He also had a bunch of jewelry and several watches. And was packing a gun.

Apparently, all that dough was just a fraction of the massive sum fleeced from Argentinian taxpayers by by Kirchner, de Vido, López, Báez and company.

Kirchner, who was indicted in May for incompetent administration, was not taken into custody.

Posted on December 31, 2016December 28, 2016 by usefulstooges 1

Those krazy Kirchner krooks

Okay, this one is kind of funny. But first you need to know who José Francisco López is.

Who is he? He’s a civil engineer and a longtime member of the sleazy Kirchner circle in Argentina. In 1991, when Nestor Kirchner became governor of the state of Santa Cruz, he put López on the administrative board of the state’s roads authority. Later he named López to executive positions in other state agencies. When Kirchner was elected president in 2003, he took López with him to Buenos Aires, appointing him to serve as the federal Minister of Public Works. As such, López was the “right-hand man” of the notorious Julio de Vido, the Minister of Federal Planning.

jflopez2 — De Vido, Cristina Kirchner, and López

In this position, which López retained under the presidency of Kirchner’s wife, Cristina, he wielded enormous power, had control of massive amounts of money, and was (along with de Vido) an object of widespread suspicion. Both were accused of a range of corrupt acts, such as pressuring construction firms for bribes and kickbacks and using federally funded construction projects to reward friends or punish enemies. One of de Vido’s and López’s associates, Ricardo Jaime, was eventually arrested, tried, and imprisoned for stealing evidence.

jflopez4 — Wads of cash in the trunk of López’s car

Which brings us to what happened this past June 14. On that day, in a district of Buenos Aires known as General Rodriguez, López was arrested while in possession of approximately $7 million dollars in cash in a range of denominations, including U.S. dollars, euros, and yen. The money was distributed among six large plastic bags, a suitcase, and the trunk of López’s car. In addition, López had on him an unidentified amount of jewelry, a receipt from a Beijing bank, and several high-end watches, including Rolexes and Omegas.

Oh, and he was packing a gun.

jflopez3 — After his arrest, López was fitted out with a helmet and bulletproof vest for his protection

There’s more. According to reports, López tried to hide the bags of money at a convent called Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima; it was, in fact, the resident nuns who fingered him, phoning the cops and reporting that (no kidding) some man was throwing plastic bags over their convent wall. When officers arrived at the scene, the ever-intrepid López tried to hide in the convent, where he endeavored in vain to persuade the nuns, who were obviously no fools, that he’d brought all that dough to donate it to them and that the police were trying to steal it.

A still from The Sound of Music. Just in case you don’t know what a nun looks like.

It was unclear from news reports whether López also claimed to have intended to give the nuns the jewelry and watches.

In any event, the nuns didn’t buy it. When the cops turned up, López offered them bribes. That didn’t work, either.

Anyway, so it goes in Argentina in these immediate post-Kirchner days. Another day, another name added to the long roster of Kirchner functionaries being investigated for money-laundering –Néstor and Cristina’s favorite indoor sport.

Posted on July 22, 2016July 21, 2016 by usefulstooges 5