San Francisco Frontiers - Argentine top court upholds ex-president Kirchner's prison sentence

"The sentences handed down by the previous courts were based on the abundance of evidence produced," the Supreme Court wrote in its ruling, adding that Kirchner's leave to further appeal her conviction "is dismissed."

The ruling makes 72-year-old Kirchner's conviction and sentence definitive.

Due to her age, she can potentially avoid jail by requesting to serve her sentence under house arrest.

The decision brings the curtain down on the career of one of Argentina's most polarizing leaders, who has loomed large over the country's political landscape for two decades.

Her arch-foe, libertarian President Javier Milei, welcomed the ruling.

"Justice. End," he wrote on X.

In a defiant speech after the ruling to hundreds of supporters outside the headquarters of her center-left Justicialist party, Kirchner accused the "mafia right" of taking a wrecking ball to her social legacy.

"They can imprison me, but people will still receive miserable wages or lose their jobs. They can imprison me, but pensions will continue to be insufficient, and families won't make ends meet," she railed.

Some in the crowd wept while others hugged each other.

"I feel anger and helplessness, but we mustn't give up, we must never give up," said Karina Barberis, 43.

Kirchner was convicted in 2022 of fraudulent administration relating to the granting of public works tenders during her 2007-2015 presidency.

She denied the fraud charges, which she claims are an attempt to scupper her career.

"Being imprisoned is a badge of dignity," she has declared.

- Power couple -

Revered and hated by Argentines in equal measures, Kirchner rose to prominence as part of a political power couple with her late husband Nestor Kirchner, who preceded her as president between 2003 and 2007.

After two terms at the helm herself between 2007 and 2015, she served as vice president from 2019 to 2023 in the last center-left administration before Milei took power.

Milei's election was seen as a widespread rejection of the Kirchners' left-wing nationalist Peronist movement, which was accused of widespread corruption and economic mismanagement.

Kirchner has been one of the fiercest critics of Milei's deep cuts to public spending and deregulation.

Before Tuesday's ruling, she had been planning to run for a seat in the Buenos Aires provincial legislature in September elections. Had she won, she would have gained immunity from prosecution.

Rosendo Fraga, a veteran political analyst, said he expected Kirchner's political clout to grow if she were detained.

On the left the threat of her arrest has led to a rare display of unity.

But historian Sergio Berensztein said he believed the mobilization for her release would be short-lived.

"Cristina today has limited leadership; she is not the Cristina of 2019," he told AFP.

- 'In prison or dead' -

The case against Kirchner relates to public works contracts awarded in her southern stronghold of Santa Cruz.

She was accused of arranging dozens of contracts for a business associate whom she and her late husband knew.

Her sentence had already been upheld by a lower court of appeal in 2024.

The initial call by prosecutors for her to be jailed sparked demonstrations in several Argentine cities in August 2022, some of which ended in clashes with police.

The following month, she survived a botched assassination attempt when a man shoved a revolver in her face and pulled the trigger -- but the gun did not fire.

The gunman said that he acted out of frustration with corruption.

"They (her political opponents) want me in prison or dead," Kirchner herself has repeatedly claimed.

In March, the United States banned her and one of her former ministers from entering the country, accusing them of corruption.

S.Hall--SFF