Argentina: Three hospitalized by toxin in Cristina Kirchner's home the day after a police raid
Three women were hospitalized yesterday in Buenos Aires after coming into contact with an unspecified toxin in the home of former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner following a police raid.
The women - Mrs. Kirchner's housekeeper and two of the housekeeper's family members - had been cleaning and tidying up the day after a 13-hour search on the apartment ordered on August 23-24 by Judge Claudio Bonadío, a close ally of Kirchner's main political opponent, President Mauricio Macri.
While cleaning the bedroom, they began feeling symptoms including dizziness, intense itching of the eyes and throat, skin and nasal irritation, and breathing difficulties.
The symptoms persisted overnight, and the following morning, on August 26, they sought medical attention at the nearby University of Buenos Aires Hospital.
The attending physician, Dr. Federico Cairoli, determined that the ailments were caused by a "contact toxin," and advised "avoiding, by all means, any further exposure."
The incident underscored a complaint filed on the day of the raid by Kirchner's attorney, Carlos Beraldi, who was improperly barred from witnessing the search as mandated by Argentine law.
Beraldi noted that counsel was also barred from a concurrent raid on the former president's home in Río Gallegos, in the country's southern Patagonia region, which was instead "witnessed" by two known local figures in Macri's right-wing "Let's Change" coalition.
Neither search uncovered any evidence.
Macri, like Judge Bonadío, has repeatedly expressed his desire to see Kirchner behind bars - though as Bonadío himself admitted last year, in over six years of investigations no offshore accounts, undeclared assets or other evidence of corruption has surfaced against her.
The same, critics note, cannot be said for Macri, who has been materially linked to 50 undeclared offshore accounts since the 2016 Panama Papers scandal, and whose family retains a large stake in electric utilities - chief beneficiaries of rate hikes of up to 1400% decreed by Macri himself.
Kirchner, who governed Argentina from 2007 to 2015, is eligible to run for president again next year and would, according to recent polls, defeat Macri by at least 8 points if she did.
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The building housing former President Cristina Kirchner's Buenos Aires apartment - rendered indefinitely uninhabitable after a police search, by a contact toxin that hospitalized her housekeeper and two of the latter's family members.
Kirchner leads in polling ahead of next year's election despite not having announced, and was seen as President Macri's chief obstacle to re-election - until the implosion of Macri's $100-billion debt bubble that began in May.
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She had to file a complaint in court before they'd return them to her.
They seem to be trying to goad her into reacting rashly, such as saying something that can be spun into an "incitement" charge.
The goal, of course, is to jail her under any pretense. They're desperate, and are trying to emulate the Temer dictatorship in Brazil - which even so, as you know, still hasn't succeeded in shutting the door to a Lula da Silva electoral victory.
Irnoically, Kirchner herself had said numerous times she's not running. But now even lukewarm supporters are urging her to run, given the rapidly snowballing crisis.
Because while Macri and his Videla-loving goons are busy persecuting the opposition and ginning up Clarín headlines, the economic erosion Argentina's been seeing since April has turned into a full-blown collapse.
The peso fell again today by 7.5% in one day. Macri begged for (and today got) a $3 billion cash advance from the IMF, runs on banks are already being reported, and community organizers in poor districts are warning of imminent food riots.
To think that the FAO declared in 2015 that while Argentina still had its share of poverty, "zero hunger was at hand." What a difference three years makes.
Argentina, you'll recall, already went though the very thing after the Martínez de Hoz "sweet money" bubble in 1979-81, and after the Menem-de la Rúa debt bubble in the late '90s. And now this.
Bubbles pop - all the more so if stoked in bad faith, as Argentine right-wingers are prone to do.
Amid the strongest recovery since 1920, the late Néstor Kirchner relinquishes the presidential sash and baton to his wife and successor, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, in 2007.
The items were absconded this weekend by order of Macri's "napkin" judge, Claudio Bonadío, during a search on Mrs. Kirchner's home - and only returned after she filed a complaint.
The search turned up nothing. But the next day, resulted in three hospitalizations due to a "contact toxin" left in her home during the search. She's been unable to return to her residence.
