Court rejects Kirchner's complaint
Argentina's Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected as inadmissible a complaint filed by former president Cristina Kirchner and left standing the dismissal of Federico Sturzenegger, the current minister of deregulation and state transformation, in the dollar futures case. The court's decision was signed by justices Horacio Rosatti, Carlos Rosenkrantz and Ricardo Lorenzetti, who applied article 280 of the national civil and commercial procedural code. That provision allows the court to dismiss extraordinary appeals at its discretion when they lack a federal grievance or sufficient importance.[S1][S2]
Kirchner, who had been accepted as a complainant by the Federal Chamber, argued that the case had not been properly investigated. The Supreme Court, however, described her appeal as inadmissible. The ruling upholds earlier decisions by a first-instance court, the Federal Chamber and the Federal Criminal Cassation Chamber, all of which had cleared Sturzenegger. Those courts found that when he presided over the Central Bank during Mauricio Macri's government, he merely executed existing contracts. They also held that deepening the investigation would amount to judicial oversight of political decisions.[S1][S2]
Origins of the dollar futures case
The original case began in 2015 with accusations of alleged irregularities in the sale of future dollar contracts, based on a complaint by Federico Pinedo and Mario Negri. That complaint named Cristina Kirchner and Axel Kicillof. Months later, Kirchner supporters filed a counter-complaint over Sturzenegger's alleged role. The complaint against Sturzenegger was brought by a group of Kirchnerist legislators in April 2016, when Cristina Kirchner was summoned for questioning by then judge Claudio Bonadio in the case known as dollar futures. The legislators accused Sturzenegger of defrauding the public administration by paying the futures contracts at devalued prices, and accused Bonadio of favoring that alleged crime and of summoning the former president for questioning.[S1][S2]
Understand this article deeper
According to the complaint, the measures had modified the conditions under which the contracts had been signed, harming state interests and benefiting private parties. Federal judge Sergio Torres dismissed the case against Sturzenegger, holding that his activity in executing the futures contracts was limited to carrying out what authorities who preceded him had formalized, both in his post and on the Central Bank board. For the judge, continuing the investigation would mean courts controlling political decisions, without any excess of jurisdiction that would make the matter justiciable. Kirchner appealed that decision, but the Federal Chamber's Chamber I upheld the dismissal. Her lawyer, Carlos Beraldi, then filed a further appeal, which the Federal Criminal Cassation Chamber's Chamber I rejected, prompting Kirchner to take her complaint to the Supreme Court.[S1][S2]
Kirchner and Kicillof already cleared
In April 2021, the Cassation Chamber dismissed the case against Cristina Kirchner and Axel Kicillof, ruling that the financial operations were economic policy decisions. The court found no crime in the Central Bank's operations and annulled the oral trial against them, saying the monetary authority's measures were legitimate and part of the state's economic policy. A key element in that dismissal was an accounting expert report meant to determine the level of harm to the state from the sale of future dollars. The accountants who analyzed the accounts said the settlement operations for dollar futures were reported in the Central Bank's balance sheets as of December 31, 2015 and December 31, 2016, and that in those years the balance sheets showed profits of 147,116,885,000 pesos in 2015 and 67,448,520,000 pesos in 2016.[S1]
With the Supreme Court's rejection of Kirchner's complaint, the dollar futures case is now closed. Cristina Kirchner, Axel Kicillof and Alejandro Vanoli, who presided over the Central Bank between October 2014 and December 2015, had already been dismissed from the case.[S1][S2]
