Although he remains rather inconspicuous in Argentina today, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was the focus of a hearing in the United States Congress as an ultra-conservative Republican senator reprimanded a Joe Biden official and asked why the US government had not yet sanctioned the vice president – whom he described as a “kleptocrat” – for corruption.
While discussing regional issues at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, conservative Republican Senator Ted Cruz He asked Brian Nichols, undersecretary of state for the region at the State Department, about the vice president on Thursday.
“No one denies, and even the Argentine court confirms, that Cristina Fernández is a kleptocrat. She is accused of obstructing the investigation into Iranian terrorism. “Why isn’t the Biden administration approving this?” Cruz asked after listing CFK’s charges in the Roads case.
“This government has repeatedly used the tools of visas and financial sanctions in numerous cases to Sanctions against leaders of the extreme left, certainly like in Nicaragua,” Cruz said. “What worries me is Argentina and why they didn’t sanction Fernández.”
There, Nichols replied: “The United States does not discuss impending sanctions, so we could not discuss it.”
And Cruz responded vehemently: “You refuse to answer me and that doesn’t change. A year ago I wrote to Secretary Blinken on this very issue, sanctioning Cristina Fernández in Section 7031C, and the State Department responded to me a year ago as follows: “President Biden and Secretary Blinken’s priority is to take a strong global stance against corruption fight.” legal powers available for this.” That was nonsense then and it is nonsense today. A year later, it is undeniable that she is a kleptocrat. Why is Biden’s State Department giving her safe passage?
Nichols: “We evaluate each case, we do not discuss specific cases before taking action. We have very robust anti-corruption programs.”
Cruz: I ask you why you don’t follow the law, and you don’t answer that question.
Nichols: My answer is that we do not discuss pending sanctions publicly.
Cruz: But it’s not pending, it’s been there for a long time.
Dissatisfied, Cruz then changed the subject.
The Republican senator from Texas sent a letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken last year In it, he called for the vice president and her immediate family to be punished in the same way the Foreign Ministry punished the former president of Ecuador, Abdalá Jaime Bucaram Ortiz, and then the vice president of Paraguay, Hugo Velázquez, for corruption in March last year . The entry visas of these officials and their family members to the United States were canceled.
In his letter to Blinken, Cruz had expressed: “I write with concern about the serious threat to the national security of the United States due to corruption in the Western Hemisphere and call on you to enforce anti-kleptocracy measures by Congress. “The Argentine Vice President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.”
At the time, Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero responded to Cruz’s claim, calling Cruz “ignorant” in a tweet and saying that “the prosecution of CFK is driven by ideological interests that arise outside Argentina.” “We care about our democracy,” he warned.
In response to a Clarín query about Senator Cruz’s request and Cafiero’s response, a State Department spokesman had said that “in the United States, as in Argentina, we have different branches of government that operate independently” and about the trial of Cristina Kirchner and his colleagues Due to the regional impact, the spokesman noted that “this is an internal judicial matter for Argentina.”
The Argentine ambassador to Washington, Jorge Argüello, said of Cruz that “he is a senator with some special qualities” and defined him as “particularly loud and controversial, with a style that tends to gain notoriety by intervening in the headlines generate.”
In July, U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would require Biden to investigate alleged corruption cases involving five Argentine officials, including the vice president. He also pointed to his son Máximo, the Deputy Minister of Justice Juan Martín Mena, Senator Oscar Parrilli and the Financial Prosecutor Carlos Zannini.
Lawmakers said at the time that the vice president had “made a pact with the devil that could have consequences of biblical proportions.”
