by Xia Lin, Ni Ruijie
BUENOS AIRES, May 21 (Xinhua) -- Mauricio Macri replaced Cristina Kirchner as Argentina's head of state in December 2015, and now that Kirchner has left office, graft charges are being brought against her at this political juncture, an expert has told Xinhua.
"When governments begin (their terms), justice's decision to advance against them is more limited and slower. When governments are nearing their ends (of terms), justice becomes more active," said Rosendo Fraga, director of the Center for Union Studies for the New Majority and member of the National Academy of Moral Sciences and Policies, in a recent interview with Xinhua.
"It is a somewhat cynical comment, but it is an empirically demonstrable commentary over time," said Fraga.
FORMER PRESIDENT ACCUSED OF CORRUPTION
Kirchner, who was president for two terms from 2007 to 2015, is currently accused by the court of corruption, with her millions of U.S. dollars in assets frozen.
In April 2017, a federal judge filed a formal lawsuit against Kirchner for "illicit association" and "money laundering," a resolution also binding her two children and four entrepreneurs.
However, she has denied all the accusations, calling them "political persecution."
On March 23, federal judge Claudio Bonadio demanded that Kirchner appear in court to testify on whether in the final days of her presidency she conspired with the Central Bank's executives to carry out financial operations against the interests of the Treasury.
The charge said that the bank sold U.S. dollars at a rate of 10.65 pesos, almost 50 percent lower than the price set by the New York Stock Exchange at the time.
BUSINESSMAN, VICE MINISTER ARRESTED
One of the entrepreneurs in Kirchner's case, Lazaro Baez, was detained in April 2016 for allegedly collaborating with her and her husband Nestor Kirchner, also a former Argentine president, for snatching 82 percent of the public contracts in the province of Santa Cruz.
Kirchner denied in front of the court that Baez was her friend.
Fraga said that more officials and so-called business partners are now being called to justice.
"Now, from trial to conviction is another matter. It depends on the effectiveness of justice and truth. That effectiveness is low," said Fraga.
Jose Lopez, former deputy minister of public works who stayed in the Kirchner couple's cabinets for 12 years, is another prominent figure in the serial allegations. He was also jailed on charges of corruption.
In June 2016, he was caught red-handed tossing 160 suitcases and bags containing some 8 million U.S. dollars over a wall into an old monastery outside Buenos Aires for concealing. Later at his home, police spent nearly 22 hours to count his stash of cash and luxuries.
JUSTICE TENDS TO BE PROLONGED
Analyzing the present and previous cases, and taking the conflicting interests of political parties into consideration, Fraga pointed out the systematic deficiency of Argentina's judicial system, under which graft probes are mostly initiated at a peculiar junction, and tend to be prolonged indefinitely.
"To some extent, we don't have a perfect institutional system, and the political context influences the functioning of the institutional system," he said.
According to legal statistics, Argentine courts used to take an average of 14 years to deal with corruption cases.
Fraga didn't think Kirchner's case will be closed any time soon, citing "the urgent demands of the people are economic and social on the one hand, public insecurity on the other hand" as the first two reasons and corruption as the third.
"This is reasonable, because the bulk of the population is moved by their urgencies," said the expert.
