Top Argentinian court maintains six-year prison sentence for ex-president Kirchner
Argentina 's Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the fraud conviction of ex-president Cristina Kirchner, for which she received a six-year prison sentence and was banned from holding public office for life.
"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.
It brings the curtain down on the career of one of Argentina's most polarizing leaders, who has loomed large over the political landscape for two decades.
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 2007-2015 presidency.
Due to her age, she can potentially avoid jail by requesting to serve her sentence under house arrest.
Kirchner denied the fraud charges, which she claims are an attempt to scupper her career and silence the opposition.
She called on her supporters ahead of the ruling, who gathered outside her home in the central Buenos Aires district of Montserrat, to "organize" in her defense.
"Being imprisoned is a badge of dignity," she said defiantly.
Power couple
Revered and hated by Argentines in equal measures, Kirchner rose to prominence as part of a political power couple with her late husband Nestor Kirchner, who preceded her as president between 2003 and 2007.
After two terms at the helm herself between 2007 and 2015, she served as vice president from 2019 to 2023 in the last center-left administration before Milei took power.
Milei's election was seen as a widespread rejection of the Kirchners' left-wing nationalist Peronist movement, which was accused of widespread corruption and economic mismanagement.
Kirchner has been one of the biggest 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.
Rosendo Fraga, a veteran political analyst, said he expected Kirchner's political clout to grow if she were detained.
But historian Sergio Berensztein said he believed the mobilization for her release would be short-lived.
"Cristina today has limited leadership; she is not the Cristina of 2019," he told AFP.
'In prison or dead'
The case against Kirchner relates to public works contracts awarded in her southern stronghold of Santa Cruz.
Kirchner is accused of arrange for dozens of contracts to be granted belonging to a business associate of herself and her late husband.
Her sentence had already been upheld by a lower court of appeal in 2024.
The call by prosecutors for her to be jailed sparked demonstrations in several Argentine cities in August 2022, some of which ended in clashes with police.
In September 2022, 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 that he acted out of revulsion for the "corrupt" Kirchner.
"They (her political opponents) want me in prison or dead," Kirchner herself has repeatedly claimed.
In March, the United States banned her and one of her former ministers from entering the country, accusing them of corruption.
But within Argentina's left the threat of Kirchner's arrest has led to a rare display of unity.
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