Argentina’s Supreme Court has confirmed a six-year prison sentence against former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner for corruption, also upholding a lifetime ban from holding public office.

The unanimous decision from the country’s highest court rejected Kirchner’s appeal and finalized the 2022 ruling that found her guilty of embezzlement. 

A polarizing opposition figure and leftist president from 2007 to 2015, Kirchner was convicted by a trial court in 2022 for a fraud scheme that steered public road work projects in the Patagonia to a close ally while she was president.

Prosecutors accused her of directing hundreds of millions of dollars to construction magnate Lázaro Báez. During her government and that of her late husband, Néstor Kirchner, companies tied to Báez were awarded dozens of government contracts but nearly half of the projects were abandoned, prosecutors said.

Báez and other officials were sentenced to prison terms.

Kirchner, who led the country from 2007 to 2015 and later served as vice president until 2023, went to the Peronist party headquarters in Buenos Aires on Tuesday, hours before the ruling was made public.

Though sentenced to prison, Kirchner, now 72 years-old, may serve her time under house arrest in either Buenos Aires or Santa Cruz.

Her legal team has repeatedly dismissed the charges as politically motivated and accused parts of the judiciary of targeting her.

The ruling reshapes Argentina’s political landscape. Kirchner remains a major opposition figure to President Javier Milei’s government, and this decision bars her from running for office again.

Milei reacted to the ruling with a brief post on X: “Justice. The end.”

Kirchner is the first former Argentine president to be convicted. Former President Carlos Menem was sentenced in another case but died before serving prison time.

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