Friday, November 7, 2025 - Argentina’s former president Cristina Kirchner, who is currently serving a six-year fraud sentence under house arrest, is set to go on trial Thursday, November 6, in a separate corruption case involving allegations that she received millions of dollars in bribes.
Kirchner, a dominant and divisive force in Argentine
politics for more than 20 years, governed the country from 2007 to 2015 and
later returned to power as vice president from 2019 to 2023. Her latest legal
battle comes as her Peronist movement reels from a sweeping defeat by President
Javier Milei’s right-wing coalition in last month’s midterm elections.
The case, widely known as the “notebooks” scandal, centers
on handwritten records kept by a government chauffeur, who claims he
transported cash bribes from businessmen to senior officials between 2003 and
2015 covering both Néstor Kirchner’s presidency and Cristina Kirchner’s
two terms.
Prosecutors accuse the 72-year-old of leading a criminal
network that collected illicit payments in exchange for awarding state
contracts. Eighty-seven people have been charged, including a former federal
minister and several junior officials.
Kirchner, who has been under house arrest with an electronic
ankle monitor since her June conviction for “fraudulent administration,”
insists the charges are politically motivated and part of a long-running
campaign to sideline her.
It remains unclear whether she will appear in court via
video link from her Buenos Aires residence. If convicted, she faces between six
and ten years in prison at the end of what is expected to be a lengthy trial.
Her defense team has challenged the reliability of the
chauffeur’s notebooks, arguing that the entries were altered more than 1,500
times and cannot be trusted as evidence.
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