Former Argentine Vice President Amado Boudou freed after appeals court slams "unfounded" ruling [View all]
Former Argentine Vice President Amado Boudou was freed yesterday following 70 days in prison after a federal appeals court overturned his detention as "utterly unfounded."
Boudou was detained at his home on November 3 but was not under formal investigation by the courts. Judge Ariel Lijo reportedly explained to him that he "was given no choice" - in reference to the right-wing Mauricio Macri administration.
Boudou, 55, had served as social security agency director, economy minister, and vice president in the center-left administration of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Macri's predecessor and chief political rival.
His nationalization of bankrupt private pension funds during the 2008 global crisis was widely credited with saving the nation's pension system; but his 2011-15 tenure as vice president was dogged by influence peddling allegations over the 2010 federal bailout of a printing contractor.
His recent arrest was on no specific charges, but instead on a presumption of “possible future obstruction of justice” - a concept so novel in Argentine jurisprudence, Judge Lijo could only cite the arrest of Congressman Julio de Vido, a another prominent former Kirchner official, on the same grounds a week earlier as precedent.
"The detention was utterly unfounded," the court stated in its ruling, noting that the defendant has complied with all court orders.
"The judge (Lijo), in 70 days, has not so much as issued a clear indictment - such that he either had no probable cause with which to link the accused to the alleged crimes, or had no real urgency to act as the judge claims."
Both Boudou and Congressman de Vido, who's 67 and diabetic, were denied the customary benefit of house arrest - a benefit Macri and close allies like Congresswoman Elisa Carrió, who spearheaded de Vido's expulsion from the House, have been actively seeking for the 733 officers convicted of human rights atrocities during the 1976-83 dictatorship.
"What matters is what's at stake for the country," Boudou said. "We are dealing with a system that is overturning the presumption of innocence and has more to do with denigration than with justice. The judiciary is committing abuses."
Boudou joined his fiancée, Mexican-born Mónica García de la Fuente, at their Buenos Aires home, where she's expecting twins.
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Former Vice President Amado Boudou leaves jail. The presumption of innocence, he said, is being overturned.
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