by The New York Court of Appeals granted Argentina an extension until February 22, to define the terms of his appeal to the sentence of US$16,000 million for the controversial expropriation of YPF carried out in 2012 by former president Cristina Kirchner and her former Minister of Economy, Axel Kicillof.
However, The deadline of January 10 is still valid that New York investigating judge Loretta Preska imposed on January 10 for the Government to present payment guarantees, such as YPF’s own shares or other assets of the Argentine state under the threat of embargoes.
The financial consultant Sebastián Maril explained that “the date of January 10 to present guarantees still stands and it is not modified. The embargoes go on the side of Judge Preska’s court.”
“Today’s Court of Appeals decision gives the country 30 more days to present your first argument in the appeal” to the sentence, added the specialist.
The lawyers representing Argentina had requested the suspension of the January 10 deadline or an extension of 90 days. “Due to the very difficult economic conditions and the need to implement urgent reforms, Argentina is not in a position to commit assets as a guarantee deposit for US$16,000 million,” the letter stated. This amount represents 32% of the 2023 Budget of the Argentine state, at the official price.
“Exceptional circumstances justify delaying until February 22 the deadline for appeal arguments” before the New York court, indicates the brief that had been submitted to the New York trial judge and which was accepted by the appeals court.
While the Parlasur deputy Álvaro de Lamadrid denounced the former Attorney General of the Treasury, Carlos Zannini for having rejected a Discovery (opening to trial) before federal judge Sebastián Ramos and prosecutor Carlos Stornelli. Discovery would have made it possible to discover the scope of the negotiations with the Petersen group, first with Néstor and then with Cristina Kirchner, he explained. The management of former president Mauricio Macri had requested it, but Zannini, as of 2019, as the new Treasury attorney, gave up on that testing measure. to learn the secrets of the social changes and international financial movements that occurred in that 2012 operation.
The new The objective of Lamadrid’s criminal complaint is to investigate the breach of duties of public officials, and cover-up actions during the four years of Alberto Fernández’s government.
“Dr. Zannini’s reprehensible and illegal conduct consisted of withdrawing from Discovery on behalf of our country, which would have served to detect the true shareholders of the trial and in addition the conduct of the complicit officials could have been investigated. of this maneuver, obviously directed by the pyramidal matrix of corruption, headed by former President Cristina Kirchner,” states the 60-page complaint to which he accessed Clarion.
De Lamadrid also asks that the role of the Eskenazi and Mauricio Macri’s officials who defended Argentina in the New York trial be investigated.
Meanwhile, Zannini’s successor in that position, Rodolfo Barra appointed Andrés de la Cruz as deputy attorney for international litigation in order for him to take charge of the trial, with President Javier Milei’s perspective that his government has the “will to pay.”
De Lamadrid sent a copy of his complaint to Barra and President Javier Milei.
Stornelli is going to study Lamadrid’s complaint because there is already a similar one that federal judge Ariel Lijo is investigating due to a presentation by the leader of the Civic Coalition-ARI, Elisa Carrió in 2012, information to Clarion judicial sources.
Lijo is waiting for a response to a request he sent to the US and Spanish courts to advance the case, although his slow actions have been criticized by Carrió and now by de Lamadrid.
In particular, Lijo investigates the scope of a note sent in April 2015 by the bankruptcy administrator of the bankruptcy of two companies of the Petersen group in Spain in which it is claimed that the government of Cristina Kirchner compensation with 18 million dollars, also, to those companies in addition to Repsol, which would have avoided the subsequent sale to Burford.
Milei told the TV channel La Nación + on Tuesday that he would create a tax with the name of the current governor of the province of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof, who in his capacity as vice minister and minister of Economy (2007-2015) was the promoter of the controversial expropriation of YPF.
“There is a problem, because we don’t have the money. We don’t have $16 billion to pay. Yes we have the ‘willing to pay’, the will to pay“, admitted the Argentine head of state. “One of the ideas we are working on is to create the “(Axel) Kicillof tax” (…), that all Argentines have to pay a certain amount of dollars every year thanks to the “Monstrous mistake that Kicillof made,” stated Milei.
Without responding to the president’s irony, the Buenos Aires governor, Paradoxically, he came out this week to oppose the reprivatization of the state oil company.
Then Milei specified that, in reality, it would be “paying this US fund.” with a perpetual bonus”. According to official sources cited by the Télam agency, the “Kicillof tax” would be a perpetual bonus to pay the court ruling. A perpetual bond is a type of investment in which the issuer pays interest to investors indefinitely, without having a specific maturity date.
In perpetual bonds, the issuer pays a coupon forever and they do not have to pay at maturity. Those that have a very long maturity, such as 100 years, are also usually called perpetual bonds, and this type of bond was already issued once in Argentina, precisely by the Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, when he was used as Minister of Finances of the Macri government.
After these statements by Milei, Burford Capital’s action on Wall Street it shot up 11%. Previously, Burford shares had risen 15% on September 8, following a court decision against Argentina that specified damages and interest in Burford’s claims.
In her ruling, Judge Preska also determined that, while a solution was negotiated in good faith based on the ruling, the government. had to pledge assets such as YPF shares, to avoid possible embargoes of the country’s assets abroad.
During the last presidency of Cristina Kirchner, the Eliot vulture fund had managed to seize the frigate Libertad in the port of Ghana.
The eventual delivery of the YPF shares, which Milei intends to privatize, will spark another controversy in Argentina.
That is, from next Tuesday until January 10, the La Libertad government will advance what type of guarantees it will give to Judge Preska.
In 2012, Argentina bought 51% of the shares of YPF from the Spanish Repsol without making a public takeover offer (OPA) to the rest of the shareholders, who claimed to have been harmed, including the Petersen group of the Eskenazi family. Cristina, and her then Vice Minister of Economy and controller of YPF-Repsol Axel Kicillof had paid about 6 billion dollars to Repsol but nothing to the Petersen group of the Eskenazi family.
Then the vulture fund Burford Capital bought those of the Petersen Group that were in the names of Spanish companies Petersen Energía Inversora and Petersen Energía and began the trial in New York. It seemed that the Government had to pay it 16,000 million dollars, but the Argentine authorities estimated that the compensation should be 5,000 million dollars.
The former director of YPF, councilor of Mendoza and Aliado de Carrió, Gustavo Gutiérrez, told Clarion that that millionaire payment to Burford “It is not a product of the mere incompetence of Kicillof and Zannini, and that the Cambiemos officials, responsible for the YPF case between 2016 and 2019, who said they had nothing to do, because it was a “lost trial.”
Gutiérrez fought with his colleagues on the YPF board during Macri’s administration. “But it wasn’t incompetence. It was a fraud designed down to the smallest detail, starting in April 2012, by the top brain of the Kirchner administration, Carlos Zannini,” he commented in harmony with de Lamadrid.
In his opinion, “the management of Cambiemos should have honestly defended Argentina and YPF, in the judicial courts of New York, as well as promote the criminal complaints filed by Dr. Elisa Carrió, by the Financial Information Unit (UIF). )”.
For their part, “the officials of the Kirchner administration looted, plundered and emptied YPF, leaving it in ruins, thus breaking another regrettable record, giving the YPF registrar a loss of its stock market value on the American stock exchange (NYSE) of more than 15 billion dollars”Gutiérrez added.
In this way, in Gutiérrez’s opinion, those officials K”constituted the fourth largest stock fraud in historybehind Enron ($0.55 trillion), Madoff ($44 trillion) and MF Global ($36 trillion).”
“We hope that President Milei ignore the chorus of pills with good manners, and understand what it would mean to fully enter into the worst link of fraud, which is “paying what is not due, knowingly,” said Gutiérrez, a political leader of conservative origin.
“President Milei is informed, now it is up to him to prevent the country from squandering, for the benefit of this sinister caste, a whopping 16 billion dollars, while ordinary Argentines struggle with daily survival,” he added. For that reason, Gutiérrez asked that President Milei “impulse for an Investigative Commission “That with this new conformation of Congress it would shed light on the illicit actions of this regrettable process that has resulted in a shameful condemnatory ruling for Argentina.”
