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Argentina's former president Fernandez told to appear in court over currency manipulation charge

Xinhua, February 27, 2016 Adjust font size:

A judge with a court in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, on Friday ordered former Argentinean President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner to appear in court to answer charges concerning the manipulation of U.S. dollar futures.

In an order, Judge Claudio Bonadio demanded Kirchner, her former economy minister, Axel Kicillof, and the former governor of Argentina's central bank, Alejandro Vanoli, appear in the court in April.

This court order was made after an investigation into claims alleging that the three had been involved in fraud by seeking to illicitly benefit from U.S. dollar futures trading.

According to local press reports, de Kirchner, Kicillof, and Vanoli were allegedly part of a ring who conspired to profit by setting the prices of the U.S. dollar within Argentina slightly lower than international markets.

This appears to have been done by using the central bank's ability to sell its reserves in U.S. dollars, while also playing on the difference between the fixed U.S. dollar value in government contracts and the value of the U.S. dollar at the end of the contracts.

Bonadio said Friday that for contracts closed from September and December 2015, the Argentinean Central Bank recorded a loss of 1.552 million U.S. dollars. The central bank also registered a deficit of "7.57 million U.S. dollars for transactions on the U.S. dollar futures market for December and January."

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner served as president of Argentina from 2007 to 2015. Endit