Vice President of Argentina Cristina Kirchner. Photo: REUTERS/Agustin Marcarian.

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Argentina’s Vice President Cristina Kirchner could be sentenced to 12 years in prison and disqualified from holding public office when judges release their decision in a corruption case on Tuesday.

However, it is likely that the lawsuit will be challenged and drag on for years in higher courts, even if it represents a defeat for the former president, who has millions of supporters across the country.

Kirchner, president between 2007 and 2015, faces allegations of alleged corruption in public works concessions during his administration. She denies the allegations and called the trial a “firing squad”.

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“Obviously there will be a guilty verdict,” Kirchner said in an interview with Folha de S. Paulo published on Monday. She claimed that her constitutional guarantees were violated during the trial.

Condemnation could elicit a furious reaction from Kirchner supporters in a country in a protracted economic crisis, where inflation is reaching 100% and where many speak of strong political polarization between left and right.

It could also cast a shadow on President Alberto Fernandez’s Peronist government, which faces an uphill battle for re-election against conservative opposition in next year’s general election.

Prosecutors allege the public works contracts were awarded to a businessman linked to Kirchner, who then returned the money to her and her late husband Nestor Kirchner, also a former president.

Defenders for the vice president say she is the victim of prosecution.

(Reporting by Nicolas Miskulin)

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