The US judiciary has ruled against Argentina again . This time, the ruling orders the transfer of control of YPF's shares to the beneficiaries of a lawsuit initiated in 2012 , when the oil company was expropriated by the Kirchner administration . The Menem administration had previously privatized the company in the 1990s .
The decision, adopted by Judge Loretta Preska of the Southern District of New York , establishes that the Argentine State must cede 51% of the company's shares to comply with a ruling that is still under appeal, in favor of vulture funds that acquired the litigious rights to a 25% share amount held by the Eskenazi group in 2008 .
In October 2023 , Alberto Fernández 's presidential administration had filed appeals against a ruling demanding payment of $16.1 billion.
The recent decision requires Argentina to transfer the shares to a custodial account at the Bank of New York Mellon and begin delivering the interest and rights to those shares within 14 days, while Argentina continues to appeal.
From the Casa Rosada, Milei stated on social media that " we will appeal this ruling in all appropriate instances to defend national interests ."
" More than 10 years have passed, and we Argentines continue to suffer the consequences of the worst government in Argentine history ," the president said, referring to the Kirchner administration.
Then, ending with an insult against Axel Kicillof bordering on xenophobia: “ P.S. I WARNED YOU THAT THE SOVIET IS A MORON! ”
Behind this ruling, there are variations in the history of the litigation . The initial share purchase by a group linked to the Eskenazy family in 2008 , an acquisition questioned for its origin and transparency.
Another key element in the discussion is the role of political figures. Former minister Axel Kicillof, who promoted the expropriation in 2012 and is now governor of Buenos Aires , initially advocated for the no-compensation stance , but later negotiated a compensation agreement in 2014 for approximately $5 billion in bonds.
The new ruling , however, ignores these agreements and orders the transfer of share control , highlighting the complexity of the ongoing legal and political dispute, taking into account that some specialists maintain that this is the beginning of a tsunami that has been building for some 20 years, with the asymmetric pesification of contracts, the expropriation of Aerolíneas Argentinas, YPF, the PBI coupon, and similar causes.
They argue that all these vulture fund lawsuits are coming to an end during Milei's presidency , given that the open cases with and without court rulings would be around 30 billion dollars, of which approximately half corresponds to YPF .
Alarmingly, in the YPF case, interest amounts to around $3 million per day, meaning that since the current president took office , nearly $1.3 billion in interest has accumulated on this lawsuit.
For now, President Javier Milei, regarding this and other similar lawsuits, is continuing with the same legal strategy as the previous administrations of Cristina Kirchner, Mauricio Macri, and Anibal Fernández.
During the previous administration in the United States, led by President Joe Biden , the Department of Justice of that country had filed a brief in favor of the Argentine Republic, recommending that the judge not take measures like the one issued this Monday.
However, the YPF expropriation trial had already been heard by the United States Supreme Court during Trump's first administration , before Biden's , at the same time that Mauricio Macri was president , with the negative fact that that US administration (which is the same today) filed a brief in favor of the beneficiaries of the ruling and against the Argentine Republic.
The current governor of Buenos Aires and then deputy minister of the economy, Axel Kicillof, was the driving force behind the nationalization in 2012, when 57.5% of YPF was owned by Repsol, 25.5% by Petersen Energía Inversora and Petersen Energía —Spanish companies belonging to the Eskenazy family group—and 17% was shared among minority investors , such as Eton Capital.
“ The Republic shall transfer its Class D YPF shares to a global custodial account at BNYM [Bank of New York Mellon] in New York within 14 days of the date of this order; and instruct BNYM to initiate a transfer of the Republic’s ownership interest in its Class D YPF shares to Plaintiffs or their designees within one business day of the date the shares are deposited into the account ,” Preska’s ruling states.
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