The money-laundering trial of former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her son Máximo Kirchner opened on Friday in Buenos Aires, with both following the first hearing by video link.
Prosecutors accuse the family of using the Hotesur and Los Sauces companies, which owned hotels and real estate, to recycle money paid to them by two businessmen, Lázaro Báez and Cristóbal López, who prosecutors say gained from public works contracts and unpaid fuel taxes. Cristina Kirchner is charged as head of an illicit association, co-author of money laundering and accepting gifts. Máximo Kirchner is charged as an organizer of the alleged ring and co-author of the laundering.
The first hearing lasted just under three hours and was devoted to the court secretary reading the prosecution’s case on Los Sauces. The prosecution’s text described a “criminal enterprise” that recycled public funds through simulated operations. The defendants, 25 in all, were mostly seen on screen for only a few minutes. Báez, already serving a sentence for corruption, joined from prison. The Kirchners’ lawyers, Carlos Beraldi and Ary Llernovoy, were in the courtroom at the Comodoro Py federal courts.
Víctor Manzanares, the family’s former accountant, who is himself a defendant and has cooperated with prosecutors, attended in person. “I come to receive my sentence when the time comes,” he said.
The court had planned to try Los Sauces now and Hotesur in March 2027, but the Federal Criminal Cassation Court, the country’s top criminal appeals court, ruled days before the opening that both cases be heard together. The defense says the payments passed through banks, which it argues shows nothing was hidden. The central dispute is whether the dealings laundered money, as prosecutors argue, or were legitimate business, as the defendants say.
Página/12 reported that Unión por la Patria, the Peronist opposition bloc, rejected the trial, with its deputies saying it seeks to “limit the people’s ability to decide freely”.
The court will hear the case three times a week. The next hearing is Monday, Oct. 26, followed by one on Friday, Oct. 30.
