TEXTO: Buenos Aires.- On September 1, the Argentinegovernment's chief of staff, Aníbal Fernández, reported the ruling by a U.S. court of appeals in New York holding that the assets of the country’s Central Bank could not be seized in order to repay so-called “vulture fund” investors.
According to the senior official, the creditors’ campaign has run out of steam, highlighting that the ruling comes as a result of lobbying by the national government which “Will not allow them to steal money from Argentines.”
Speaking to the press before entering the Casa Rosada, Fernández recalled that “Argentina pays everyone,” but criticized the attitude of some opposition leaders, such as Mauricio Macri, who proposed to pay these hedge funds.
As such, these politicians wanted Argentina to submit to Judge Thomas Griesa’s ruling, which found in favor of the exploitative investment firms, allowing them to move forward with a lawsuit targeting the bank's assets.
If “These servile maneuvers had been made…Argentines would have been stripped of everything,” emphasized Fernández in regards to Macri’s position.
According to the official, also running for governor of Buenos Aires, those who supported submitting to the vulture funds “Were raffling off what belongs to Argentines, allowing bondholders to take what isn’t theirs.” On the other hand, he praised President Cristina Fernández’s handling of the situation: “To move these types of negotiations forward you have to be at the height of statesperson and know exactly what’s going on, just like the Argentine government and president of the nation,” he noted. (TeleSUR)
CONTEXT
In December 2011, Judge Griesa ruled that the Argentine government could not continue repaying the bonds restructured in 2005 and 2010, unless it also paid in full the holdout hedge fund investors who rejected these two agreements. These financial groups represent less than two percent of the bondholders Argentina owes money to, with 93% accepting a debt restructuring plan in 2005 and 2010. Since 2014 the Argentine government has been fighting against the onslaught of these vulture fund creditors, whose demands were supported by successive rulings by Griesa. They even proposed seizing assets from Argentina’s state entities and Central Bank.The hedge fund investors, such as NML Capital and Aurelius, are not Argentine lenders; but bought the country’s debt bonds at base prices from third parties at the onset of the 2008 economic crisis and are now demanding massive repayments from the South American nation, as well as extortionate interest rates. In September 2014, the UN approved a resolution establishing a legal framework to resolve future conflicts like that which Argentina is facing.
