The ex-partner of former Argentine president Alberto Fernández accuses him of abuse

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — The ex-partner of former Argentine President Alberto Fernández has accused him of physically and psychologically abusing her, according to an Argentine court order issued Tuesday. The accusations have shocked the country and threaten to further tarnish the reputation of a moderate leftist whose government many Argentines blame for deepening the country’s economic crisis.

In a court order obtained by The Associated Press, a federal court in Buenos Aires opened a criminal investigation into accusations of “psychological terrorism,” telephone harassment and physical abuse against Fernandez from Fabiola Yáñez, his former partner of at least eight years and the mother of his second child.

The order said Yáñez, who testified by phone from her home in Madrid, decided to press charges against Fernández for threatening and “psychologically intimidating” her on a daily basis and causing her “minor injuries in the context of gender-based violence.” The document did not provide further details about her accusations of physical violence.

Fernández, a leftist Peronist politician who served as Argentina’s president from 2019 to 2023, has vehemently denied her accusations and vowed to prove in court “what really happened.”

“It is not true and what I am now accused of never happened,” Fernández said in a statement posted Tuesday on social media platform X, declining to provide more information to the media, citing his family’s privacy.

In the ruling, Judge Julián Ercolini issued a court order prohibiting the former president from approaching less than 500 meters (yards) from Yáñez or having contact with her.

The judge banned Fernández from traveling outside Argentina and demanded that he “cease all forms of intimidation or harassment, both directly and indirectly” against Yáñez. The ruling also asked Argentine authorities to provide Yáñez with police protection.

The injunction comes weeks after Yáñez’s allegations first emerged among thousands of leaked text messages being examined by federal investigators in a separate fraud case against Fernández, in which Fernández is accused of irregularities in the awarding of state insurance contracts — allegations he also denies.

In leaked messages exchanged with Fernández’s former private secretary, María Cantero, Yáñez described incidents of abuse and harassment that occurred while she was pregnant with her two-year-old son, Francisco.

A court document seen by the AP says Ercolini contacted her about the revelations in June, but Yáñez “did not want to initiate criminal proceedings.” But she changed her mind and contacted a Buenos Aires court on Tuesday to file charges against the former president. Her lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

Under the Peronist government of Fernández and his vice president, a powerful populist party former president Cristina Fernández de KirchnerArgentina went down to their the worst economic crisis in two decades with rising inflation and deepening poverty.

Fernández, former law professor, has decided not to run in the 2023 Argentine elections.Public outrage over the country’s decline helped accelerate Radical Libertarian President Javier Milei to Office.