The crime of fraud due to fraudulent administration to the detriment of the State that they accuse her of entails disqualification due to her status as a public official. But the parties may present a request for an extraordinary appeal to reach the Supreme Court. In this type of case, the double amount is transferred to the Supreme Court and only until it is issued could the sentence be considered “firm.”and therefore, the penalty is executable.
But this is where politics begins to intersect at various angles: anti-Kirchnerism will seek to sanction the Clean File bill in Congressa barrier to entry for anyone who intends to run with a conviction handed down by an appeal court. Cassation it is. There are not many in that condition and with the votes to do it, so it almost has its own name. But if that attempt fails, the discussion to come – which will go to court if Cristina threatens to run for 2025 – is whether the disqualification could acquire autonomy by itself.beyond the fact that the crime that contains it is not final because the Supreme Court (without deadlines) did not issue a ruling on the merits of the issue.
Some voices began at noon – when the bulk of the sentence was announced – to say that The disqualification already had a “double conformity”by the Federal Oral Court No. 2 that condemned her and by Chamber IV that ratified it. This discussion could acquire its own dynamic and is what those around the former president identified as core since the first rumors that Cassation was going to be issued in the sense that it did. In these lines it had been suggested that there were coincidences between the first messages exchanged from the courts and the sudden and dizzying candidacy to preside over the Justicialist Party by Cristina Kirchner. Today, the strategy has its point: If I had to explain to a Martian what happened today, it is that justice prevents the president of the main opposition party to the government of Javier Milei from competing electorally..
Some Kirchnerist must regret having used the word “ban” last year, when Cristina was fully eligible and declined any application. Using the same term, now, which seems closer, entails a loss of strength in the impact of what it truly means. Nor will the judges be recognized with anything less than technical data: By majority – with the votes of Mariano Borinsky and Diego Barroetaveña -, Cassation rejected the Public Prosecutor’s Office’s claim to accuse her of illicit association. That is, he ratified his acquittal on that topic.
This is not a detail. In the constellation of causes surrounding the former president, there is a kind of circuit of gears with points of contact. In Creole, there are cases that are tried with other cases, even if they have not been judged yet. Viality is the example of a sentence handed down with valued evidence that came from other files at the time of the arguments and that were not necessarily part of the trial. The illicit association was the center of the kind of Venn Diagram that has the former president in the center and is fed back with files such as Hotesur or Cuadernos.
Cristina herself – in her fiery arguments she had asked herself, not without reason – How many illicit associations could she integrate simultaneously? Each file that involved her accused her of being the leader of different illicit associations. If this classification had prospered, the trials ahead could already have as a precedent a conviction for this crime without the need to verify in their own processes whether such an association existed.. Once again, the political ends up intersecting with the strictly technical.
There is a subtle change of focus but it is worth it for the analysis: at the same time as the (brief) reading of the sentence, Cristina sent a video in which she announced a visit to Moreno for a meeting with women activists. A day like any other. The Judiciary also gave a signal of reverse decompression. Cassation set a date – after much cross-pressure on the content of the ruling – to make its decision known, something completely unusual that is not broadcast on YouTube either. He even resisted operations regarding the idea that that date would not be respected. The decision to ratify everything as it came from the Oral Court was not surrounded by mystery either. He avoided releasing the file so that it would be leaked to the press and arrive like a blow to the defense notification inbox. They are gestures to interpret.
In any case, the case will escalate to the Supreme Court through defenses such as those of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which with unity of action usually supports the previous instance in its punitive claims. A rumor had reached the surroundings of the Patria Institute that the Court could before the end of the year stamp a “280” (without giving grounds for the rejection of an appeal) and thereby leave Cassation firm. The Court seems busy with its own business but the rumor reached deep into the party ranks closest to Cristina and therefore the PJ presidential operation had its reinforcement from that angle.
Cassation could give an additional hand: reject an extraordinary appeal by the parties considering that there is no question of arbitrariness that enables the federal instance to go to Court. More time to appeal “in complaint” to the highest Court and get closer towards the end of the year. There is a precedent that for a hypothetical 2025 discussion could be uncomfortable. In 2017, Carlos Menem – revered by milleismo – tried to present himself as a pre-candidate for senator for La Rioja in those midterm elections. The National Electoral Chamber applied the “Romero Feris” precedent and prevented him from doing so based on the sentence issued against him for arms smuggling to Ecuador and Croatia. In the first instance, he had encountered no obstacles.
Due to the pressing nature of the times – a vote was taken that same week – The Supreme Court annulled the decision of the CNE and allowed the Riojan to run (he was elected). On August 22, 2017, he pointed out that “the decision is arbitrary because it tried to dogmatically resolve the disqualification of a candidate with the sole appeal to a ruling of the same court, to which he granted precedential status, maintaining that the similarity between the cases was incontrovertible. without providing the necessary elements that adequately support such a conclusion”. And to further criticize, the Court argued that “the chamber also did not take into account the jurisprudential changes carried out with regard to the scope of the guarantees surrounding the criminal process, especially the right to review of convictions. Although it did not opens a trial on the underlying issue, that is, on the qualification to be a candidate, determines that the court a quo issues a new ruling that has grounds that support it as a constitutional act.”
Source: Ambito
