Horacio Rosatti, who sentenced Cristina Kirchner, was a minister under Néstor

At 65 years old, jurist Horacio Rosatti holds the highest position in the Judicial Branch: president of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation. However, his career is marked by a political paradox that now unsettles the most hardline sectors of Kirchnerism: he was a trusted official of Néstor Kirchner, later promoted by Mauricio Macri, and supported by the entire Frente de Todos bloc in the Senate.

In a historic ruling, the Supreme Court of Justice confirmed this Thursday the sentence that condemns Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to six years in prison and permanent disqualification from holding public office, within the framework of the Vialidad case, which investigated structural corruption in the awarding of public works during her administrations. The decision was made in an extraordinary meeting by judges Horacio Rosatti, Carlos Rosenkrantz, and Ricardo Lorenzetti, who upheld the ruling issued in December 2022 by the Federal Oral Court No. 2.

With this decision, the former president is formally excluded from the 2025 electoral race and could face a detention order in the coming hours, unless otherwise decided by the enforcement court. The sentence represents an institutional watershed: for the first time since the return of democracy, a former president of the Nation receives a final criminal conviction for corruption.

 

Who is Horacio Rosatti?

Rosatti was appointed in 2003 as Procurador del Tesoro de la Nación and, just a year later, in July 2004, Néstor Kirchner appointed him Minister of Justice, a position he held until 2005. His departure, officially attributed to "personal reasons," was actually due to internal tensions over the management of public works funds. "Many times one has to stand firm and say 'no'", Rosatti revealed in an interview with TN in 2016, referring to a bidding process for the construction of prisons that he had to supervise and that was under the purview of José López, then Undersecretary of Public Works, later sadly notorious for the bags with millions of dollars.

This disagreement was his exit door from Kirchnerism, with which he had collaborated since Néstor's inauguration. The break was definitive.

In 2016, twelve years later, Rosatti returned to the political-judicial scene in grand fashion: he was proposed by President Mauricio Macri as a Supreme Court judge —along with Carlos Rosenkrantz— and after the initial controversy over the appointment by decree, his nomination obtained two-thirds of the Senate, with the favorable vote of the entire Frente de Todos bloc.

Rosatti took office in June of that year, with a Court reduced to three members after the departure of Eugenio Zaffaroni and Carlos Fayt. He then shared the majority with Ricardo Lorenzetti and Juan Carlos Maqueda, forming what became known as a "Peronist majority", which at times voted against the positions of the Cambiemos government, leaving Rosenkrantz isolated.

During his years on the Court, Rosatti signed rulings that were uncomfortable for both Macrismo and Kirchnerism. For example, he halted the gas rate hike in 2016, but in 2017 he ruled in favor of the payment of the Income Tax for new judges. He was also one of the judges who initially voted for the controversial 2x1 for those convicted of crimes against humanity —a ruling that the Court later reversed due to social pressure—.

Even more relevant for the current political context, Rosatti upheld the conviction of former vice president Amado Boudou in the Ciccone case, and also ruled against the appeals filed by Kirchnerist leader Milagro Sala, who has been convicted and under house arrest since 2016. In 2019, he voted to prevent the re-reelection of governors Sergio Casas and Alberto Weretilneck, a key ruling against attempts to remain in power indefinitely.

Cristina Fernández's criticism of Rosatti has been systematic since his appointment. In a harsh public letter at the end of 2020, she accused the Court of "leading and directing the Lawfare process" against her. "That media-judicial coordination to persecute and imprison opponents was deployed with full intensity since Mauricio Macri's arrival to the Presidency and, what's worse: it still continues," said the former president, in a phrase that reveals the conspiratorial tone with which she usually refers to her judicial situation.

The Kirchnerist contradiction is laid bare: that jurist whom Néstor brought into the cabinet and whom Frente de Todos voted for without objections to join the Court, today becomes one of their main political enemies. In fact, Rosatti was one of the three judges who convicted Cristina Kirchner.