Alcohol, marijuana use and violence: Details of Fabiola Yáñez’s testimony against ex-president Alberto Fernández

“Hell” – that’s how former first lady Fabiola Yáñez describes her problematic cohabitation with former president Alberto Fernández, whom she reported last week for gender-based violence. 

Yáñez, 43, testified before the lead prosecutor in the case, Ramiro González, from the Argentine consulate in Madrid on Tuesday, speaking via Zoom.

Details from the four-hour hearing immediately began to leak out. Various media outlets, including Clarín, La Nación and Infobae gained access to Yáñez’s statements, echoing its content in their pages in an exposé.

According to reports, Yáñez accused former president Fernández not just of physical and psychological violence, but also of having prompted, due to his repeated assaults, the problematic consumption of alcohol and marijuana.

The use of the substances does not just extend to Yáñez – she also accuses Fernández of partaking himself while serving as head of state.

Yáñez testified that the violence she allegedly suffered at the hands of Fernández started in 2016. She described it as “consistent and habitual.”

The former first lady even revealed that, in that same year, Fernández urged her to have an abortion, which she considers to have been “the worst decision.”

“We have to sort it out, you have to have an abortion,” Yáñez says Fernández allegedly told her.

The former first lady also reported alleged physical assaults she may have suffered during that time, recalling on one occasion that she was “kicked while on the floor.”

Her 2016 abortion, she alleges, might have led her to consume alcohol and marijuana. Yet Yáñez asked for Fernández “not to pretend to be a teetotaller” – she claims the former president drank alcohol frequently and “he smoked [marijuana], too.”

Yáñez added that, following the infamous party at the Olivos presidential residence during the Covid-19 pandemic and the defeat of Peronism in the 2021 midterm elections, violence from Fernández became “increasingly worse.” 

She described that period as a “living hell.”

Consulted as whether she asked for help, Yáñez repeated previous statements that she communicated with María Cantero, Fernández’s long-term private secretary, and revealed that she also contacted UCR lawmaker Facundo Manes’ clinic to have a check-up.

Asked by the El Cohete a la Luna website about the claim, Manes said this week he is aware that Yáñez went to his INECO Cognitive Neurology Institute, but that he never treated her personally and that he does not know off-hand which doctors cared for her either.

– TIMES/PERFIL