The Justice of the United States confirmed this Friday the judgment expropriating YPF and Argentina must pay $16,099 million for the decision made at the time by Cristina Kirchner and her then Minister of Economy, Axel Kicillof.
A week after New York Judge Loretta Preska’s decision was announced, the judge released the final verdict in the YPF expropriation trial. This is a catastrophic failure that will require Argentina to pay just over $16 billion to the Burford fund for unlawfully expropriating the YPF shares of the oil major Repsol and the Eskenazi group.
Argentina knew that the case had already been lost and intended to pay no more than $5 billion. The difference between the amount of the penalty and the Argentine claim was the calculation of interest based on the date of arrival of Argentine officials at YPF and the date on which the expropriation was authorized by law by Congress.
Argentina wanted to point out to Judge Loretta Preska that the date of expropriation was May 7, 2012, when the expropriation law was passed. In this way, compensation would be made from that day. In addition, the country wanted the retroactive annual interest rate that it would apply (from 2012, when the land was expropriated, to 2023) to be 0%. That would raise nearly $5 billion.
The Burford fund believed YPF’s intervention came about on April 16, when then-Economy Minister Axel Kicillof was appointed the company’s auditor, ousting private shareholders. From that moment until May 7, YPF shares fell 25%.
In this scenario, Burford would have raised around $8.3 billion, even at 0% interest rates, as Argentina wanted. In any case, the litigants sought recognition at a rate of 8% per annum, which would bring the check to $16,000 million, which the judge ultimately decided. That is, the judge leaned toward the highest sentence for Argentina.
Argentina reserves the right to appeal to the U.S. judicial system
Argentina reiterated its willingness to cooperate in good faith with the demands of the United States judicial system to work on the level of the formula established in the process of nationalizing YPF, while reaffirming that it reserves the right to appeal final decision in this case.
This was announced by the defense of the Argentine state, in charge of the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, in a letter to the New York judge responsible for the case, Loretta Preska, to which she had access. Telam.
“The Republic respectfully disagrees with the accuracy of these damage figures and also disagrees with the liability decisions of the court and reserves all rights of appeal,” clarifies the defense, which has a deadline of 30 days to process the formal request.
The letter is actually a response to a letter from representatives of the Petersen and Eton Park Group, Kellog, Hansen and Associates Studio, who accused the country of “refusing to communicate in good faith with the plaintiffs about the preparation of a joint lawsuit,” said trial attorney Dereck Ho.
On September 8, when the verdict against the country regarding the formula for calculating the amount of the penalty imposed in March 2023 was announced, the national government announced that it would “immediately” appeal against Preska’s verdict in a case for the nationalization of the YPF.
The law firm Sullivan & Cromwell expressed “its opposition to the New York District Court’s unprecedented and erroneous decision” and confirmed “its intent to appeal the ruling.”
