MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina: Former Governor and Senator given 16 years for rape

Alperovich and his wife used to be close to Néstor and Cristina Kirchner

The three-time former governor of the Argentine province of Tucumán José Alperovich was sentenced to 16 years in prison Tuesday for sexually abusing his niece, who worked as his secretary during his term as a national senator. It took Judge Juan Ramos Padilla 15 hearings and testimony from almost 70 witnesses and experts to hand down his verdict and decision which also included the defendant's disenfranchisement.

 The plaintiff was Alperovich's niece, 35 years his junior. The events took place between Dec. 14, 2017, and March 26, 2018.

“A year has passed. I am still waiting, day by day, for answers, serious investigations, measures, justice. And meanwhile, I look around me and warn that neither the horror I had to live through nor the hells that thousands of women and girls go through are enough for them to treat the causes with the responsibility and due diligence they deserve. It alerts me and scares me because they are killing us,” wrote Florencia L. in 2019 when she made the case public.

The sexual abuses were determined to have taken place in the cities of San Miguel de Tucumán and Yerba Buena in Tucumán as well as in an apartment in the exclusive Puerto Madero area in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires.

Alperovich's wife Beatriz Rojkés was also Provisional Senate Speaker (number two in the line of succession to the Executive) under President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

When this scandal broke out, Kirchnerism kept Alperovich on the Senate and never moved a finger to lift his Parliamentarian immunity while allowing him to take a leave. It was not until this week, his term in the Upper House already over since 2021, that his former political allies stayed at a distance.

The Kirchners and the Alperovichs coexisted politically until Juan Manzur surged into Tucumán's scene as the new strongman within the provincial Peronist party.

Pending any appeals, Alperovich is to remain incarcerated, it was also reported in Buenos Aires.