BUENOS AIRES — One former minister was caught in a convent with about $9 million in cash and luxury watches stuffed into duffel bags. Two others have been indicted on corruption charges, as has a former vice president. Then there is Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the former president, whose hotel and real estate businesses are being investigated for alleged involvement in a kickback scheme.

Argentina’s politicians are not new to corruption scandals. But the whiff of graft surrounding officials from Mrs. Kirchner’s government, which was voted out of power last year, has infuriated the nation to a point not reached in two decades, when there was a slew of accusations against the administration of former President Carlos Saúl Menem.

The scandals are also casting a pall over the achievements of Mrs. Kirchner’s political party, which came to power in 2003 as part of a leftist wave that swept through Latin America. The allegations against Mrs. Kirchner and the four other former officials from her party, the Front for Victory, are unproven, though one of the former ministers indicted on charges of corruption, Ricardo Jaime, a former transportation secretary, was convicted separately last year of taking bribes.

As prosecutors and judges press ahead with the cases, many Argentines question whether the ruling class can move beyond a culture of graft that has hamstrung the country’s progress. “I’ve given up hope,” said Yolanda Galván, 50, a cashier at a pharmacy here, referring to the country’s history of corruption scandals. “They all end up being the same.”