Hotesur-Los Sauces: Supreme Court confirms trial for Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

T

he Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down an extraordinary appeal presented by former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, national deputy Máximo Kirchner and the other defendants in the so-called ‘Hotesur and Los Sauces’ case, confirming a previous ruling overturning their acquittal and ordering them to be placed on trial.

The investigations, which have been unified into a single casefile, investigate alleged money-laundering, illicit association and graft linked to the Hotesur and Los Sauces hotel chains in the south of Argentina, which are both owned by the Kirchner family.

Prosecutors allege that the hotels were used as vehicles for kickbacks for multi-million-dollar contracts awarded to Lázaro Báez, a business ally who in turn paid massive hotel bills for rooms which were never occupied. 

Business tycoons Fabián De Sousa and Cristóbal López, along with Martín Báez, Osvaldo San Felipe and Alberto Leiva are also listed among the defendants.

In 2021, Tribunal Oral Federal  No. 5 had decided to acquit the accused, arguing violations of the principle of ne bis in idem, otherwise known as double jeopardy.   

Nevertheless, that decision was quashed by the Federal Criminal Cassation Court in September, 2023.

The extraordinary appeal presented by Fernández de Kirchner’s defence lawyers has now been rejected by the Supreme Court, which considered it to be neither a final sentence nor a federal issue justifying their intervention. 

The justices also pointed out that objections concerning procedural guarantees and the application of the most benign law could only come up during the trial.

“The defence did not manage to demonstrate a current, concrete and real grievance beyond being submitted to trial,” expressed the ruling, signed by Justices Horacio Rosatti, Carlos Rosenkrantz, Juan Carlos Maqueda and Ricardo Lorenzetti.

With this decision, the case will now have to proceed to trial, where the actions and responsibilities of the indicted – a list which also includes Fernández de Kirchner’s niece and the daughter of Senator Alicia Kirchner, Romina de los Ángeles Mercado – will be determined.

“Autonomous grounding would require the writ of the extraordinary appeal to contain a detailed account of the main relevant facts of the case permitting them to be linked to questions of a federal nature via a concrete and reasoned critique of the arguments on which the sentences they impugn are based,” indicated the high tribunal.

Along those same lines they pointed out that “a rebuttal of each and very one of the arguments on which the trial is based would be required.”

– TIMES/NA