Ricardo Raúl Jaime (born January 16, 1955, in Córdoba, Argentina) is an Argentine politician who was the longtime Secretary of Transportation under Presidents Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Since he resigned that position in 2009, Jaime has been charged in dozens of criminal cases with such crimes as embezzlement, irregularities in awarding subsidies, abuse of authority, misappropriation of public funds, and conspiracy. In 2013, he received a suspended sentence of six months for concealment of evidence. In 2015 Jaime received an 18-month sentence for accepting bribes from the former train operator Trenes de Buenos Aires during his time as Secretary of Transport. Later that year, he then received a further six years imprisonment for failure to prevent the 2012 Buenos Aires rail disaster. Career Provincial politics Jaime worked for the general land registry in his home province of Córdoba between 1983 and 1984, then relocated to Santa Cruz province, where he was director of the land registry from 1984 to 1987 and councilor and chairman of the Honorable Council from 1987 to 1991. In 1989, when Néstor Kirchner began to campaign for governor of Santa Cruz, Jaime supported him. After Kirchner was elected governor, he appointed Jaime Minister Secretary General of the Interior for the province, a position he held until 1996. After Kirchner was elected to a second term, he appointed Jaime head of the Provincial Council of Education. In late 1999, he returned to Córdoba to assume the position of Deputy Minister of Education for that province. “There are few records of his life in Córdoba,” wrote La Nación in 2005, adding that officials in that province refused to provide information about Jaime's professional history there. One source in Santa Cruz said that Jaime, during his time there, “spoke in Spanish but accented it as if it were English,” and identified himself as an Argentine investor who had been living in the U.S. National politics In May 2003, after Kirchner's ascent to the presidency of Argentina, he appointed Jaime the nation's Secretary of Transportation. Jaime was criticized because he had no transportation background. Nonetheless, he enjoyed the complete confidence of President Néstor Kirchner. As Secretary of Transportation, Jaime was responsible for the management of 2 billion pesos a year to subsidize transport, and was accordingly known as “the lord of the subsidies.” His tenure, according to one source, “was marked by projects like the bullet train