A judge in Argentina has charged Amado Boudou the Vice President with bribery as well as conducting business that is incompatible with holding public office, due to the acquisition of a company that prints the currency in the country and later benefiting for contracts with the government.
Boudou has been accused of using different shell companies along with middlemen to take control of a company that was given government contracts to print Argentina’s peso and to print campaign material for he and President Cristina Fernandez’s ticket.
The decision by Ariel Lijo the federal judge was published on Friday on the website of the justice department. The judge ordered $25,000 seized from the Vice President, who will remain free during the time prior to his trial along with five more defendants.
Boudou is currently in Central America on official business and says he is innocent of all the charges despite plenty of evidence that links him and the other defendants that became public through reports by newspapers in Argentina.
Many people in Argentina have questioned why the president has remained loyal to Boudou when these allegations have made the VP the least popular of all politicians and opponents threaten to have him impeached, while some allies claim he should resign.
Fernandez has not spoken publicly regarding the case.
Boudou is alleged to have acted as the economy minister and VP to smooth the release of a printing company from bankruptcy and then engineer the purchase of the same company by his shell company so he and other partners could take advantage of tax exemptions and lucrative contracts with the government.
Alejandro Vandenbroele a businessman in Argentina ran the shell company and is accused of representing Boudou secretly in business dealings.
The scandal was uncovered after the former wife of Vandenbroele exposed the arrangement saying she needed to give interviews because her life had been threatened because of what she had known.
The prior owners of the printing company testified that Boudou had been involved personally in all the negotiations and had persuaded them to sell over 70% of the company to his shell company.
