MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Kirchner's defense seeks to lift her ban from office before the 2027 elections

The new element is an economic audit commissioned by the defense itself, not a court-ordered expert report

Lawyers for former Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said on Tuesday they have added a new element to the petition they are pursuing before the UN Human Rights Committee, seeking to overturn her final conviction in the Vialidad case and, more immediately, to set aside the lifetime ban from public office that prevents her from running in next year's presidential election.

The defense argues openly that the proceedings were aimed at barring her from electoral politics. The individual communication was filed in late July and documents eight alleged violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Among them it invokes Article 14.5, arguing that the Court of Cassation did not carry out a genuine and thorough review of the defense's grounds, and Article 14.7, contending that 49 of the 51 public works tried had already been the subject of investigations closed by dismissal or shelving.

The new element is an economic audit commissioned by the defense itself, not a court-ordered expert report. Its starting point is a spreadsheet from the National Roads Directorate that came to light on August 6, when a technical official from the agency testified in the Cuadernos case, an ongoing trial in which Kirchner is also a defendant and where the presumption of innocence applies.

According to the report, prepared by Brazilian economist Antonio Corrêa de Lacerda, companies belonging to Lázaro Báez's Grupo Austral received US$18.66 million, or 0.85% of the more than US$2 billion disbursed through one of the agency's funding sources. The study adds that the fifteen largest construction firms accounted for 75% of those resources. “The sentence was absolutely unjust and an innocent person was convicted,” lawyer Carlos Beraldi said at a press conference in Buenos Aires.

The conviction, however, did not turn on Báez's share of overall road spending. The ruling, upheld by the Supreme Court in June 2025, found Kirchner guilty of fraudulent administration over the irregular award of 51 road works in Santa Cruz province, involving overpricing, extended deadlines and advance payments, and put the loss to the state at around US$500 million. It imposed a six-year sentence, which she has been serving under house arrest for some fifteen months. The central conduct attributed to her was signing decree 54/2009, which prosecutors described as the instrument of the scheme.

Neither prosecutors nor the courts involved have commented on the filing.

The Human Rights Committee examines individual communications under the Optional Protocol to the Covenant and issues views that are not binding and do not annul domestic rulings; it may request interim measures, likewise without binding force. The defense hopes the body will agree to take up the case at its next session, expected between late October and early November, and said it would afterwards seek review of the conviction in the Argentine courts.

The team comprises, alongside Beraldi, Brazil's Rafael Valim, a lawyer for President Lula da Silva, and Spain's Javier Borrego, a former judge of the European Court of Human Rights.