MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Influencer's conviction for meddling with Argentine First Lady upheld

Monday's ruling may be appealed before the Superior Court of Justice of the City of Buenos Aires

Argentine influencer Eduardo Miguel Prestofelippo's sentence to 30 days' house arrest for harassing First Lady Fabiola Yáñez has been upheld Monday. As a result of the measure, the convicted felon is to wear an ankle device for the duration of his sentence.

Prestofelippo, who goes by the handle “El Presto” and proudly boasts a picture of him in his younger days with former dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, must also undertake a course at the National Institute against Discrimination (INADI) called “Workshop on gender violence and respect for women.”

He is also banned from coming within 200 meters of Yáñez for a full year. He was sentenced earlier this year to 30 days of effective imprisonment for harassing and discriminating against Yáñez through social media. His conviction was upheld Monday by a Buenos Aires Misdemeanor Court.

The sentence will be served at his home for health reasons and he will have to wear an electronic anklet, in addition to bearing the costs of the court proceedings.

Monday's ruling may be appealed before the Superior Court of Justice of the City of Buenos Aires.

“El Presto” published in 2020 a series of videos on his Youtube channel and Facebook. In one of those videos he addresses President Alberto Fernández: ”If tomorrow on Twitter I publish a picture of your wife in the balls, because she has them because it is your wife's past, I will end up in jail (...). You have to have balls, you didn't look for a girl from her house, you looked for a girl that the big TV channels don't know her precisely for being the first lady, they know her for other records, stop fucking around Alberto, stop fucking around (sic).“

The sentencing matched the requests of Prosecutor Daniela Dupuy, who argued that ”Prestofelippo started an intimidating, persecutory -and discrediting- campaign against First Lady Fabiola Yañez which was carried out through digital media, by means of attacks to her intimate life and meddling in aspects of her private life, with total disregard for the real affectation that said acts may cause on the name and honor of the victim.“

The three facts for which Fabiola Yáñez sued El Presto for his ”stop fucking around Alberto“ posting, then for another dated August 3, 2020, mentioning ”the First Lady's easy life“ titled ”PROSTITUTIÓN VIP?“ and the other the following day ”Watch it before they censor it“ in which he delves further into Yáñez's finances and questions how she could allegedly afford to buy an apartment in the exclusive Puerto Madero area in Buenos Aires.

Prestofelippo was born in Paraná, Entre Ríos, and arrived in Córdoba dreaming of becoming a journalist. He dropped out of the university claiming these institutions ”lie to the kids” and started his own media and profiles on social platforms.

He first made the news after posting that Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) was “not going to leave Congress alive.”