MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

“The Kirchners, growing richer and richer”

The controversial 2 million US dollar purchase former president Néstor Kirchner made in October 2008 has already made it to the foreign press. After the controversy, Spanish newspaper El País' headlines read: “The Kirchners, growing richer and richer.”

“He has been condemned by Argentine society and political parties, since in Argentina such an amount of money is a real fortune,” says the paper.

Amidst scandals and accusations of embezzlement, the article also talks about President Fernández de Kirchner's popularity decrease. “Everyday, Néstor Kirchner's prestige, obtained after his handling of the aftermath of the 2001 crisis, fades more and more to the point it becomes a burden for his own wife. They are both suffering of a popularity decrease that doesn't seem to hit rock bottom.”

The article finally concludes that 2010 “has not started all well for the Kirchner marriage. Worn down after the farming conflict, accusations of harassing the press and tampering with official statistics, economic instability, a rising insecurity and an ever growing personal fortune, Kirchner can now see the strong unanimity he once managed to impose is starting to crack even within his own party, the Victory Front.”

Earlier this week the former president has declared that the money was used to purchase a hotel in El Calafate, a favourite Patagonian resort among tourist destinations.

Last Sunday, the Buenos Aires media, at odds with Kirchner and his wife, published he had purchased dollars moments before the currency would make a $0.25 pesos jump.

However, Kirchner declared there was “no chance of currency exchange profit, since the payment was done in dollars, and that was the reason of the purchase.”