Blow to corruption: the Argentine state seizes the Kirchner family's hotel empire

International

Judicial blow to corruption in Argentina. The courts have determined that former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner stole 85 billion pesos (about $500 million, more than €430 million) through fraudulent construction projects, an amount that she and eight others convicted in the case must return to the state, which will affect the former president's hotel empire.

In a 40-page document, prosecutor Diego Luciani has detailed the list of properties and assets that Kirchner will have to hand over to the state as compensation for what she stole. In addition to 26 properties linked to the family—some transferred to her children Máximo and Florencia—and several savings accounts, the former president will have to hand over her iconic companies, Los Sauces S.A. and Hotesur S.A.C., condominiums, and hotel management companies owned by the family. Los Sauces owns two hotels in El Chaltén, Santa Cruz province, the Sauces-Casa Patagónica in El Calafate and La Aldea, both closed and abandoned since the pandemic; Hotesur S.A.C., for its part, owns two other establishments in El Calafate, Las Dunas and El Alto Calafate, both of which are operational.

The link between the hotel business and the corruption scandal

The link between the Kirchners' hotel business and Cristina Fernández's corruption scandal goes even further. As stated in the ruling of the Argentine Supreme Court: “Through the processing of 51 public tenders for the construction of road works on national and provincial routes in Santa Cruz between 2003 and 2015, an extraordinary fraudulent maneuver took place that harmed the financial interests of the national public administration.”

All the stolen capital was black money that they wanted to launder. And it is precisely at this stage that the hotels owned by the Kirchners played an important role. According to information from the newspaper La Razón, through ghost accommodation contracts in these luxurious establishments, located in Argentine Patagonia, all this capital was laundered over a period of years for the family fortune.