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Argentina's public prosecutor on Monday asked that Vice President Cristina Kirchner be sentenced to 12 years in prison and disqualified from public office for life for alleged corruption during her two terms as president.
Kirchner, 69, is accused of fraudulently awarding public works contracts in her fiefdom in Patagonia, but even if convicted she would not go to jail so long as she benefits from parliamentary immunity as an elected senator.
A verdict is expected at the end of the year.
There are two ways she could lose her parliamentary immunity: either by losing her senate seat at the next election, or if the Supreme Court were to ratify an eventual guilty verdict.
Minutes after public prosecutor Diego Luciani's request was made public, the office of President Alberto Fernandez issued a statement condemning "the judicial and media persecution" of Kirchner.
"None of the actions attributed to the ex-president has been proved and the whole accusation is based purely on the function she exercised at that time, which sadly degrades the most basic principles of modern criminal law."
Another 12 people are also accused of involvement in the illicit attribution of public works contracts in the southern Santa Cruz province in favor of businessman Lazaro Baez.
The period investigated includes Kirchner's eight years in office from 2007 to 2015 and the preceding four years when her late husband Nestor Kirchner, who died in 2010, was president.
Luciani hit out at "an authentic system of institutional corruption" which he said was "probably the biggest corruption operation the country has known," while Sergio Mola, another public prosecutor, said "there were systematic irregularities in the tenders over a 12-year period."
"The evidence clearly demonstrates illicit manoeuvres," added Mola, who said the defendants had sought to defraud the state through "discretion in the use of funds."
"It is not credible that Cristina Fernandez (Kirchner) would not have known about anything in the solitude of her office," said Mola.
Shakira faces 8 years in prison over tax evasion in Spain
By Pedro Oliveira Jr.
July 29 (UPI) -- Shakira's hips don't lie, but according to Spanish prosecutors, her tax returns do.
The Colombian superstar was indicted Friday on six counts of tax fraud in Spain, where she faces eight years in prison and a fine of nearly $24.5 million.
Prosecutors say Shakira didn't pay income taxes on some $14.8 million between 2012 and 2014, when she became a regular in Barcelona in the early days of her relationship with soccer star Gerard Piqué, according to El País.
Lawyers for the singer spent weeks in negotiations with tax authorities, hoping for a deal that would've quashed charges and excluded jail time. In May, judges threw out a defense appeal to have the case dismissed, El Mundo reported.
But this week Shakira rejected the state's settlement offer, maintaining her "absolute innocence" and blasting the prosecution for "trampling her rights," El País reported.
Shakira has maintained throughout the proceedings that she lived in the Bahamas and spent much of that time traveling for work, officially moving to Spain in 2015.
Yet her defense team is in for a tough fight to prove her residence was elsewhere in those two years.
The case against Shakira is further bolstered by a detailed investigation by El Pais, tracking the singer's day to day in those two years to show she spent more than half the year there. She was reportedly in Spain for 246 days in 2012, 210 days in 2013 and 243 days in 2014.
Her life in Barcelona included times in music studios, French tutoring, twice-weekly visits to a hair salon and zumba classes, El País reported.
Alabama church secretary pleads guilty to embezzling $209K
By Michael Gryboski,
Mainline Church Editor
Christian Post
The former financial secretary of an Alabama congregation has confessed to embezzling approximately $209,000 from the church over the course of several years.
Sharon Collins, who worked at First Baptist Church of Foley from 2007 to 2019, admitted in a recent plea agreement that she stole $209,745 via multiple church credit cards.
Collins admitted to using cards issued in both her name and the names of coworkers to steal the money and use it for expenses, satellite TV bills, plane trips and even a college degree, reported local media outlet WALA.
U.S. District Judge Terry Moorer read out the 12 counts of wire fraud to Collins on Wednesday, with Collins pleading guilty to them all. Sentencing is scheduled for November.
"I imagine, for you, this is embarrassing," Moorer told Collins, as quoted by WALA. "Even if you find this embarrassing, it's not the worst thing in the world someone has ever done, and you can live this down."
Although the plea agreement will result in the government dropping 20 other identity theft and wire fraud charges, Collins could still face up to 20 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine, according to the Mobile-based NBC 15 News.
The college degree she used church funds to pay for was a bachelor's degree in psychology and criminal justice at Troy University.
Now that's funny!
Collins reportedly began stealing money from the church in 2008. The criminal actions were not uncovered until years later when a new pastor and the finance committee realized that a savings account valued at around $100,000 had disappeared.
In July 2019, the church fired Collins, and the congregation turned the matter over to the Baldwin County Sheriff's Office and later the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Foley FBC Senior Pastor Drew Whittington said in a statement that the congregation is "grieved about what took place" but also "grateful for the work of law enforcement officials."
"We have taken the appropriate steps to uphold the ethical stewardship of God's household," stated Whittington, as quoted by WALA.
"This has been an unfortunate chapter in our history, but we are thankful to put it behind us and focus on being a healthy church that uses our resources to further the Gospel of Jesus Christ."
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