IN THE early hours of June 14th a suspicious neighbour spotted a man armed with an automatic rifle throwing bulging black bin liners over a convent wall in General Rodríguez, a suburb on the western fringes of Buenos Aires. The man then leapt over the convent’s big wooden gateway. Fearing for the safety of the three elderly nuns who lived there, the neighbour called the police. Two patrol cars turned up. The officers say they refused the man’s attempt to bribe them.

The bin liners contained 90 kilos (200 pounds) of banknotes: $9m, plus €153,000 ($168,000) and smaller amounts in other currencies. The man was José López, who for 12 years was secretary of public works in the governments of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her late husband and predecessor, Néstor Kirchner. The antics of Mr López, who has been charged with illicit enrichment, have provided a defining retrospective image of the Kirchner era in Argentina.

As president Ms Fernández adopted a regal manner, never admitting mistakes and browbeating anyone, from businessmen to media owners and judges, who got in her way. After the narrow victory in November’s presidential election of Mauricio Macri, a centre-right opponent of her political heir, Daniel Scioli, there was talk that she would remain the dominant power in Argentina. Yet out of office, Ms Fernández has quickly been exposed as a paper tigress. Much of her Peronist movement has deserted her. And now she faces a real threat of jail.

Three judges are investigating her or her associates. One case involves her government’s sale of dollar futures last year to prop up the peso before the election, which cost the central bank $4 billion when Mr Macri’s inevitable devaluation followed. More personally damaging are two judicial probes into two hotel companies she and her family own in Santa Cruz, a province in Patagonia. Scores of rooms were block-booked (but few occupied) for months on end by Aerolíneas Argentinas, an airline which she renationalised, and by companies controlled by Lázaro Báez, a former bank clerk, and by another close business associate of the Kirchners. Mr Báez, who is in jail on suspicion of money-laundering, received the lion’s share of public-works contracts from Néstor Kirchner when he was governor of Santa Cruz and, later, many federal contracts.

One judge has blocked Ms Fernández’s bank accounts and credit cards; the other has found that Florencia Kirchner, her 26-year-old daughter, had $4.7m in several safe-deposit boxes and $1m in a bank account. She says this is her inheritance from her father. The Kirchner family’s declared wealth increased 17-fold during their dozen years in power to 119m pesos ($8m). They say that came from hotels and the revaluation of land, which they bought cheaply from local authorities.

Ms Fernández’s response to being investigated has been to embrace victimhood, blaming “judicial persecution”. Take on powerful interests, such as farmers and multinational companies, and “it’s clear that one of the risks is prison,” she told foreign reporters, whom she summoned to her retreat in El Calafate in Santa Cruz on July 23rd.

Whatever happens to the former president, several things stand out from these investigations. The first is how ham-fisted the alleged corruption seems. Mr López’s preference for crisp notes was shared by others; in 2013 two sidekicks of Mr Báez told an interviewer they had sent €55m in cash to accounts in tax havens (they later withdrew this claim). Another is the brazen sense of impunity. Much of the suspected wrongdoing was known about for years, thanks to investigative journalists. Judges did nothing about it.

“In Argentina while you are in power you are untouchable,” says Roberto Saba, a law professor at the University of Palermo in Buenos Aires. “The day you leave” official watchdogs and judges will investigate. That knowledge may have been behind the Kirchners’ quest for permanent power, by alternating in office (a scheme thwarted by Néstor’s death in 2010), by using the state to build a large clientelistic political base and by subordinating economic management to popularity.

Although the scale may have been greater under the Kirchners, padding public-works contracts has been going on for decades in Argentina. As in Brazil and Mexico, it has been a means to finance politics while, in some cases, getting rich. The Argentine clean-up is not comparable to that in Brazil, where judges are pursuing those who are now in power. Will that change? Mr Macri has praised the judiciary for “starting to work in an independent way” and said he hopes this will continue. That will require deeper changes.