The Supreme Court of Justice upheld the update of the seizure amount in the Vialidad case, in which Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was convicted along with other defendants.
The amount increased from $85 billion to $685 billion, consolidating the progress of asset enforcement measures related to the case.
The decision of the highest court represents a key step in the asset recovery phase, as it enables the continuation of processes such as valuation and eventual auction of assets. In total, the seizure order encompasses 111 properties and assets that must account for the economic damage determined in the case.
Cristina Kirchner
The Federal Oral Court 2 has already initiated the valuation process for some of those assets, particularly those located in the southern part of the country. These actions are part of the enforcement mechanism to actualize the seizure established after the conviction.
The Court's resolution also directly rejected the nullity claims and the request for suspension of the asset measures that had been presented by the defenses.
In that same vein, the court dismissed the appeal filed by businessman Lázaro Báez, who also has a final conviction of six years in prison for fraudulent administration to the detriment of public administration.
Cristina Kirchner
The ruling was signed by judges Horacio Rosatti, Carlos Rosenkrantz, and Ricardo Lorenzetti, who thus closed the last instance of review regarding this aspect of the execution of the sentence. With this decision, the update of the amount was upheld based on a report from the Court's own Accounting Experts Body.
The seizure must be jointly borne by all those convicted in the case. However, among those who still retain significant assets is Cristina Kirchner, as a large part of Lázaro Báez's assets have already been liquidated in previous processes, such as the bankruptcy of Austral Construcciones and the money laundering case known as the “Route of K Money.”
The Vialidad case investigated a fraud scheme against the State developed between 2003 and 2015 in the province of Santa Cruz. According to the file, during that period 51 public works bidding processes were systematically awarded to the Austral Group, owned by Báez.
According to the judicial investigation, these awards involved the management of billions of pesos in public works contracts, in a scheme that led to the confirmed convictions by the Justice.
