Loretta Preska ordered the judicial measure to face the debt with the investment fund Bainbridge Fund.
Judge Loretta Preska of the Southern District Court of New York ordered embargo an account of the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic (BCRA) in the United States for US$ 95.8 million, to face an Argentine debt that defaulted in 2001.
The embargo was issued to deal with the debt with the investment fund Bainbridge Fund, according to the economist Sebastián Maril, who closely follows the lawsuits against Argentina abroad and works for Latam Advisors.
Central Bank sources indicated that to the extent “there is nothing that affects” to the monetary authority, as reported by NA.
Co-participation: the National Government will pay $98,500 million in bonds to the City of Buenos Aires
The seized money belongs to a account that the Central Bank has with the Federal Reserve, with funds that were used at the time as collateral to guarantee the payment of the Brady bonds, issued in the 1990s, as part of the restructuring program launched by the then US Treasury Secretary, Nicholas Brady, to decompress the debt of the countries of the region.
“There are still $75 million of Brady bonds left to expire next March 31. Being a collateral, Argentina cannot remove it from the account until the payment is made. In the last 20 years, these funds have increased in value and today are equivalent to around US$297 million. The Bainbridge fund asked to seize the equivalent of US$ 96 million and Judge Preska accepted,” Maril explained to NA.
According to private calculations, the Argentine State owes around US$ 579 million to institutional funds who litigated against the country and obtained final rulings in their favour.
Despite the debt swaps offered in 2005, 2010 and 2016, there were a number of funds –better known as holdouts– who bought that defaulted debt to sue the country.
Among them there are seven competing to get the few local assets that are abroad seized.
Other cases opened by vulture funds
Argentina also maintains other open cases in the courts of the United States. Among them, the claim of the Titan Consortium fund for the payment of US$ 327 million that the country owes him for the ruling against it in the ICSID -the arbitration court of the World Bank-, as a result of the expropriation of Aerolíneas Argentinas and Austral.
If all the negative judgments in New York courts, ICSID and the United Nations Commercial Court are taken into account, the State owes US$ 935 million, according to Maril’s calculations.
LM
