Cristina Fernandez's Lawyer Says Home Staff Poisoned After Police Search

A Lawyer to the former Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (2007 - 2015) who is under investigation for accepting bribes during her term as head of state, says that a mysterious substance was detected in Kirchner’s Buenos Aires home after officials searched the residence on Saturday.

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On Monday, the lawyer to Fernandez, Carlos Alberto Beraldi, wrote in a statement published on the former president's Facebook page that on Saturday, August 25, "An extraordinarily grave situation arose in the residence." Beraldi said that after investigators searched Kirchner’s home on Thursday, the weekly cleaning staff cleaning the premises on Saturday began to suffer from “dizziness, strong itchy throats, and eyes, and had difficulty breathing.”

A search warrant was ordered last Thursday by Judge Claudio Bonadio in relation to the “Bribery Notebooks” case over which he presides that alleges that Kirchner received payments in exchange for political favors and public works contracts during her presidencies.

The Senate, where Kirchner currently serves, narrowly voted to approve the warrants last Wednesday, Aug. 22. Legislators voted to have two other Kirchner properties searched, one of which is located in Calafate.  

The Argentine lawyer stated that the regular staffs’ symptoms persisted until Sunday, August 26, prompting them to get checked out at the Hospital de Clinicas in Buenos Aires where doctors, says Beraldi, verified they had been poisoned and that they avoid the Kirchner home.  

"It was found that the ailments were caused by contact with a toxic substance, and it was recommended to avoid re-exposure to the same environment," the statement said.

Beraldi added that Kirchner was no longer staying at her Buenos Aires apartment in the meantime. “My client decided not to return to the apartment until there is an examination of the place and the items that were manipulated during the raid."

A government spokeswoman declined to comment.

Kirchner has been indicted on charges she ran a corruption scheme with her public works secretary, Jose Lopez, who was caught stashing millions of dollars in a convent near capital city Buenos Aires. Lopez is helping investigators in exchange for a more lenient conviction, reports Reuters.

Senator Kirchner used last week’s search warrant debate to reiterated that the corruption investigation against her is merely political persecution on part of the current Mauricio Macri administration.

“If something was missing to consecrate the political persecution and the use of the Judicial Power as an instrument for political persecution, it was this case,” Kirchner said while linking her case to a strategy by several current right-wing governments in Latin America to target former progressive leaders like Dilma Rousseff and Lula Da Silva in Brazil, and Rafael Correa in Ecuador.

Earlier this month a national newspaper published contents of the notebooks kept by a chauffeur to the Kirchner administration who said he transported bribe money from construction companies to public works officials from 2005 to 2015.

Beraldi added in his statement that Judge Bonadio ordered seized some items that had nothing to do with the investigation and were taken with "no other purpose than to generate harm and humiliation."

There is no word yet on an investigation into the possible toxic contamination in the Kirchner residence.