Following Argentine legal deadlines, Judge Ercolini later decided that there was enough evidence to move forward with formal charges against him.
On Monday, a federal judge decided that there is enough proof to file formal charges against former President Alberto Fernandez of Argentina for assaulting former First Lady Fabiola Yanez.
According to a verdict released Monday by federal judge Julian Ercolini and obtained by The Associated Press, Fernandez is charged with causing “minor and serious injuries, worsened by having been perpetrated in a context of gender violence and against her spouse on two occasions.”
A portion of Fernandez’s assets worth 10 million pesos, or around $8 million, were also frozen by Ercolini.
The instances that Yanez, 43, reported in August 2024 have been refuted by Fernandez, 65, the president of Argentina from 2019 to 2023.
A official investigation was started last year when a prosecutor accused Fernandez in response to the woman’s accusation.
Fernandez has the right to appeal this decision, and the case won’t go to trial until higher courts have made their decisions. Years may pass with this appellate process.
Following her election as president in 2019, “the physical violence would have continued and escalated, more precisely after she became pregnant (around the end of July to the beginning of August 2021), in the form of blows that caused injuries to the aforementioned’s body, shaking, open-handed slaps, and neck grabs,” Ercolini wrote.
The judge took into account Yanez’s testimony, medical certifications, supporting testimony from friends and relatives, and WhatsApp exchanges she had with the former president’s private secretary that included pictures of her injuries.
The judge stated that Yanez would have suffered “psychological damage, causing a permanent deterioration of her health” as a result of eight years of “psychological and physical aggression.”
The former president may spend up to eighteen years behind bars if proven guilty.
