By Kanishka Singh and Maximilian Heath
WASHINGTON/BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) -The U.S. government on Friday barred Argentina’s former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and a former senior official from entering the United States, after the pair were implicated in “significant corruption” in a prolonged legal saga in Argentina.
Fernandez de Kirchner, a leftist former two-term president who ruled Argentina from 2007 to 2015, retains significant political influence at home and is an outspoken adversary of libertarian President Javier Milei, a backer of U.S.
President Donald Trump.
In a statement, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that Fernandez de Kirchner and former Planning Minister Julio Miguel De Vido “abused their positions by orchestrating and financially benefiting from multiple bribery schemes involving public works contracts, resulting in millions of dollars stolen from the Argentine government.”
The former president has denied wrongdoing and called the cases against her politically motivated.
Rubio accused both the former president and De Vido of undermining “the Argentine people’s and investors’ confidence in Argentina’s future.”
The ban on U.S.
entry also applies to immediate family members.
Fernandez de Kirchner, who served as vice president for four years to 2023, is the current head of the main Peronist party.
But her popularity has ebbed as legal challenges have mounted.
Late last year, a court upheld her conviction for doling out state contracts to a friend, carrying with it a six-year prison sentence and a lifetime ban from holding office. Fernandez de Kirchner has said she rejects the court’s ruling as flawed, and is taking the case to the Supreme Court.
In a Facebook post on Friday, she sought to turn the focus to Milei and Trump.
“You left your prints all over this,” Fernandez de Kirchner wrote in the lengthy post, referring to Milei.
She called for her supporters to march on Monday, a date when human rights are traditionally celebrated in Argentina to mark remembrance of the country’s 1976 military coup.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington and Maximilian Heath in Buenos Aires; Additional reporting by Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Editing by Leslie Adler, David Alire Garcia and Rosalba O’Brien)
