Friday March 31, 2023 | 4:06 p.m.
The judge of the Second Southern District of Manhattan, Loretta Preska, ruled this Friday against the national State in the trial that is being processed in the United States for the renationalization of YPF and ordered to pay an indemnity that could reach almost US$20,000 millions.
According to the sentence, Preska exempted YPF from responsibility in the expropriation of 51% of the oil company’s shares in 2012, under the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, but blamed the national State for the maneuver.
Now, Argentina has two judicial instances left to appeal this resolution, although it must also deposit a million-dollar guarantee as the losing actor in the litigation. The amount claimed by the litigating funds ranges between US$8.5 billion and reaches up to US$19.8 billion. But these amounts are not final, publishes Ambit.
“The plaintiffs were holders of YPF securities at the necessary times and, therefore, have enforceable contractual rights against the Republic” and a “summary judgment against the Republic for their claims for breach of contract,” said the magistrate in her failed.
The winners of the lawsuit are the Burford Capital and Eton Park funds, which bought the right to litigate against YPF and Argentina from a group of former shareholders of the oil company at the time of the nationalization.
His main argument in the case was that the government of Cristina Fernández Kirchner broke YPF’s concession contract, did not launch a takeover bid for all the shares to minority partners, and expropriated 51% of the hydrocarbons company and renewable energy.
What’s more, the lawsuit began with the former minority shareholders of YPF, after the Argentine State paid the Spanish Repsol -which controlled the oil company- US$5,000 million as compensation for the “renationalization” of the company.
What did they say in YPF
The first reading that they did in the company is that it is a “positive” ruling for YPF because the judge recognizes that the company had no responsibility in the expropriation and that it is not a guarantor of the national State. In this way, the assets of the energy company are out of risk or embargo. But also, although he condemns Argentina, Preska did not accept all the legal claims of the plaintiff funds either.
“The Court agrees that the takeover bid price the Republic would have been required to offer if the Republic complied with the Statutes is the appropriate measure of plaintiffs’ compensatory damages,” the judge wrote, and but added that “because the date on which Republica activated its takeover bid obligation cannot be identified, it cannot determine the date of counterfactual notice and therefore cannot quantify claimants’ compensatory damages.”
