On the eve of a trial that could convict Argentina’s vice president, Cristina Kirchner, the country’s president, Alberto Fernández, ordered this Monday (5) the opening of a criminal investigation into an alleged trip that would have been secretly made by a group of media businessmen, prosecutors and judges, including Julián Ercolini, who led the court case against the policy.
The president announced the investigation in a statement on national television, stating that it was “evident that a large part of the private media system decided not to report what happened on the group’s trip to the Lago Escondido region”, located in Argentine Patagonia.
Cristina is accused of having led a “corruption matrix” alongside her husband, Néstor Kirchner (1950-2010), during his presidential term (2007-2015). The process investigates irregularities in the concession of public works, and the judgment is scheduled for this Tuesday (6).
According to Fernández, the request for an investigation was made after the revelation of messages in which businessmen, prosecutors and judges combine strategies to hide the trip. According to the president, “it hurts democracy to see the anti-republican promiscuity with which some businessmen, some judges, some prosecutors and some officials move”.
“So far they have felt unpunished. It is time they started to account for their conduct,” he said. “I decided to instruct the Minister of Justice to appear before the Public Ministry and request that the facts related to the trip in question and related to its financing be criminally investigated.”
According to a report in the newspaper Página 12, the trip took place on October 13 to Lago Escondido. The travelers, who flew in a private plane, would have stayed at the country house of British millionaire Joe Lewis, owner of thousands of hectares in the south of the country.
Over the weekend, messages written on a messaging app surfaced in which the alleged participants in the trip agreed to devise a strategy to hide the trip and the source of funding.
“It seems evident that the trip took place. And everything seems to indicate that, knowing that the event had become news, those who would have participated in it were worried about the real risk of becoming involved in a series of crimes”, said the president.
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