By Aaron Miller-
Argentina’s top criminal court has confirmed a prison sentence against their former president Carlos Menem.
The ruling ratifies a 2015 sentence of four and a half years for embezzlement. Memem was found guilty of overseeing the embezzlement of public funds to pay bonuses to government officials during his presidency in the 1990s.
A court in Buenos Airesat the time found him guilty and sentenced him to four and a half years after finding that Mr. Menem had devised a scheme in which money set aside for an intelligence agency was siphoned away to pay a grand sum of $466 to ministers and other government workers on top of their regular salaries. He wasn’t jailed because he had congressional immunity as a Senate until December 2017, a period which lapsed almost a year ago.
The judicial ratification of his sentence means he will finally face jail for his alleged offences, though he plans to appeal the sentence. The amount of money he is accused of embezzling is a huge amount, but it is strange that he is not accused of appropriating any of the mega sum for himself. Cynics say he was smart enough not keep any if the funds in his own bank account but would have had some clever way of benefitting from it in a way he thought would nit implicate him. Somehow, he has been implicated, and now has a battle on his hands to clear his name.
The courts also confirmed a sentence of three and a half years against former economy minister Domingo Cavallo for his role in illegal payments to staff that were authorised by Menem during his 1989-1999 presidency. Both Cavello and Meme deny the allegations, and have vowed to appeal it. Argentina is notorious for its appalling level of immunity which allows senators and government officials to escape