Top court bans CFK from public office for life

Argentina’s Supreme Court upheld former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s fraud conviction, ratifying her sentence to six years in prison as well as a lifelong ban on holding public office.

With President Javier Milei facing a crucial midterm vote in October, Argentina’s three Supreme Court justices ruled unanimously Tuesday on one of the country’s most polarising cases. In the run-up to the ruling, unions and party affiliates blocked traffic around Buenos Aires, burning tires and banging drums. Argentina’s two other court seats remain vacant.

Fernández de Kirchner, who could now face imminent arrest, was found guilty of graft charges in 2022 in a landmark legal case, but avoided prison time as she enjoyed immunity as a sitting vice-president. The conviction was upheld on appeal in 2024 and Fernández de Kirchner exhausted her legal options, leaving the final say to Argentina’s highest court.

Fernández de Kirchner painted the ruling as politically motivated, telling supporters outside her Peronist party’s headquarters that the powers-that-be know they are “the only ones that can build an alternative” when Milei’s government “falls apart.”

The court summoned Fernández de Kirchner within the next five business days, according to local media. At 72, however, she is eligible for house arrest and unlikely to face prison time.

Kirchner, a face of the long-dominant Peronists, last week announced she would run in the Buenos Aires Province legislative election in September. Some experts believed that could have granted her immunity or at least prolonged the process, but the ruling extinguishes that possibility.

“The big question mark now is how Fernández de Kirchner will be able to hold onto leadership of Peronism once she loses the main tool she’s always used to exert power, which is to run for office and prove her support at the polls,” said Alejandro Catterberg, director of top polling firm Poliarquía in Buenos Aires. “She no longer has that chance.”

While she remains one of Argentina’s most popular opposition leaders, only 33 percent see her in a positive light, according to the most recent LatAm Pulse survey, a poll conducted by AtlasIntel for Bloomberg News.

“The republic works,” Milei, who has long painted Fernández de Kirchner as emblematic of the political establishment he’s trying to upend, said in a celebratory social media post after the ruling.

Fernández de Kirchner rallied her party as the ruling approached, urging supporters to mobilise ahead of the election in which Milei is hoping to win a larger share of seats in Congress to pass major economic reforms.

“This model is not viable,” she said of Milei’s government before a crowd of supporters Monday night. “They think they’re going to solve it by sending me to jail. I may be jailed, but people will be worse off each day.”

Fernández de Kirchner served as president from 2007 to 2015. Her party lost the most recent election to Milei, but she has remained a prominent opposition leader, serving as president of her party.

“For the last decade and a half, Argentine politics has been reorganised under two very strong poles and their satellites, just as the Earth revolves around the sun,” said Joaquín Bagues, managing director at local brokerage Grit Capital Group.

Fernández de Kirchner and former president Mauricio Macri “were the sun for both parties, and now we’re entering a new era,” he added.

A divisive figure, Fernández de Kirchner survived a botched assassination attempt in 2022 and faces other corruption cases at various stages of litigation. She has repeatedly denied wrongdoing for the graft case and denounced it as a political manouevre by her opponents and the justice system.

In March, the US government banned Fernández de Kirchner and her immediate family from entering the country due to her corruption conviction.