By Lucila Sigal
BUENOS AIRES, March 4 (Reuters) - Argentine President Javier Milei said on Wednesday he has appointed chief Buenos Aires prosecutor Juan Bautista Mahiques as the country's new justice minister.
Mahiques, who has been the attorney general of the Argentine capital since October 2019, will replace Mariano Cuneo Libarona, who had been justice minister since December 2023, Milei announced in a posting on X.
Local newspaper La Nacion reported that Libarona had cited personal reasons for his departure.
"I assume this role with the conviction that without legal certainty there is no investment, without stable rules there is no development, and without independent judges there is no republic," Mahiques said in a separate post on X.
In a speech before Congress last Sunday, Milei announced that this year he will seek to pass more reforms to the penal code to introduce harsher sentences for criminals.
The government won several legislative victories last week when Congress approved a controversial labor reform and a change to the penal code that lowers the age of criminal responsibility from 16 to 14.
(Reporting by Lucila Sigal; Writing by Leila Miller; Editing by Nicolás Misculin and Paul Simao)
