SINCE she became president in 2007, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has grabbed control of the country’s pension funds, its main airline and largest oil company. Recently she won approval in Congress for laws that give the executive de facto control over the judiciary. But there is one target that has eluded her: dismantling Grupo Clarín, a big media conglomerate that has become her bête noire.

In 2009 Congress approved a controversial media law that would force the company to divest most of its assets. Clarín secured an injunction staying the law’s implementation for three years while it sought judicial annulment of four clauses it claims are unconstitutional. In December a federal court ruled against Clarín. But in April an appeals court unanimously overturned that decision and ruled that the media law was arbitrary and disproportionate. The government said it would appeal to the Supreme Court.

The government claims that Clarín enjoys monopoly power. But Ms Fernández’s critics say she wants to silence criticism of the government. A recent report on a Grupo Clarín television channel that implicated Ms Fernández’s late husband and predecessor, Néstor Kirchner, in a money-laundering scheme seems to have intensified her ire. Blocked in the courts, the government has reached for other weapons.

On May 9th Ms Fernández’s party proposed a bill to expand the government’s stake in Papel Prensa, the country’s sole newsprint manufacturer, from 28% to 52%, thus seizing control from the other two big shareholders, Clarín and La Nación. Since Argentina suffers import and foreign-exchange controls, obtaining an alternative supply of newsprint would be hard. Ms Fernández’s majority in Congress makes the bill’s approval likely.

A government ban on supermarket advertising in the press especially hurt

Clarín

, the group's daily newspaper, and

La Nación

, another independent daily. In November the government changed the capital-markets law to give the state-controlled regulator, the National Securities Commission, the power to intervene in companies listed on the stockmarket if the interests of minority shareholders are neglected. Ricardo Kirschbaum, the editor of

Clarín

, says he fears that this law will soon be used to seize control of the company.

Conveniently, the government inherited a 9% stake in Grupo Clarín when it nationalised the pension system. Last month four government representatives appeared at Grupo Clarín’s annual shareholder meeting. Upon entering the auditorium, Guillermo Moreno, the trade secretary who is Ms Fernández’s economic enforcer, said audibly to another official: “Look at everything we’re going to have.” Clarín says it has recently received 13 “strange” inquiries from the securities commission. On May 15th the interior minister denied that the government intended to intervene in the newspaper, saying this was “a big lie”.

“For them this is war,” says Celia Szusterman, an Argentine political scientist based in London. “When one strategy doesn’t work out, you adapt. You destroy your enemies by any means possible.” The last concerted effort to silence Argentina’s media was made by the country’s brutal military dictatorship in 1976-83. Its weapons were cruder. Even so, that is not the kind of company Ms Fernández normally likes to keep.