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Argentinien „technisch zahlungsunfähig“
Argentiniens zäher Rechtsstreit mit New Yorker Hedgefonds um alte Anleiheschulden spitzt sich wieder zu. Wirtschaftsminister Axel Kicillof lehnte es gestern in einem Radio-Interview mit dem Sender „Del Plata“ ab, die Forderungen der Gläubiger zu bedienen und bezeichnete die klagenden Investoren als „starrsinnig“.
Die Reaktion ließ nicht lange auf sich warten: „Herr Kicillof scheint so mit seinem…
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Argentina Bonds Judge to Hold Hearing on Contempt Request
Argentina Bonds Judge to Hold Hearing on Contempt Request
By: Bob Van Voris
The U.S. judge overseeing litigation about Argentina’s defaulted debt has scheduled an emergency hearing at 3 p.m. in New York to consider arguments the South American nation’s latest plan to avoid complying with his orders constitutes contempt of court.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa set the hearing today hours after lawyers representing Paul Singer’s NML Capital, and other…
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Paul Singer’s Next Trick Could Make The Argentine Government Way Angrier Than The Time He Took Its Boat
Linette Lopez, Business Insider, Aug. 15, 2014
In October of 2012 hedge fund manager Paul Singer pulled off a stunning trick. As collateral for a decade-long, billion dollar debt, he convinced a Ghanaian Court to impound an Argentine military vessel, La Fragata Libertad, sitting in one of the African nation’s harbors--indefinitely, 200 person crew aboard.
A lawyer for Ghana’s Ports and Harbor Authority called it an “international disaster.” The International Maritime Court of the Sea had to get involved. As you can imagine, Argentina’s President, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, was enraged at the “vulture” hedge fund manager.
She may take Singer’s next trick even more personally.
A Judge in Nevada has granted Singer’s request to dig into over 123 shell companies allegedly set up by an Argentine businessman named Lazaro Baez.
In Argentina, Baez has been accused of laundering money for the President and her late husband, former President Nestor Kirchner, since they got to power in 2003.
Singer’s lawyers allege that around $65 million in Kirchner ill-gotten gains could be sitting within those companies--and thanks to a June Supreme Court ruling upholding a part of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, he’s allowed to chase Kirchner money to the end of the earth.
It’s all in an effort to seek some payment of the over $1.3 billion worth of sovereign debt the country owes him and a group of hedge funds known collectively as NML. Back in 2001 they bought Argentine debt for pennies on the dollar and refused to take haircuts on that debt. Argentina, in turn, refuses to pay them even under an American Court’s order.
Until Argentina pays up, NML is trying to get whatever Argentine money it can through what seems like dogged detective work--this investigation into 123 Nevada companies is just one example of that.
“We will have a much clearer road map to the source of the funds that funded these 123 corporations [once discovery is complete],” said Robert A. Cohen who serves as legal counsel to Singer and the group of hedge fund creditors known as NML Capital. “It is believed that at the end of the rainbow we will find high powered Argentine official.”
Here’s why: Last year an Argentine TV show called Periodismo Para Todos (Journalism For Everyone) aired a series called The “K” Money Route. It was an expose attempting to answer a simple question; In the 11 years since the Kirchners came to power, how did their wealth explode from $1.4 million to $14.1 million according to government filings?
The President’s annual salary equals a little more than $100,000 a year according to the Council of Hemispheric Affairs.
The series alleged that that $14.1 million number might low, and focused on Baez, a construction magnate who won millions in government contracts after Nestor Kirchner took power. Two businessmen--one allegedly working as a courier for Baez, and another as a financier--admitted that they had a hand in laundering money for the Kirchner’s.
One was even caught on tape weighing bags of cash to be sent abroad.
An Argentine prosecutor named Jose Maria Campagnoli, who produced a big report on the matter was suspended in December. The report spoke of 150 companies Baez set up in the United States to funnel kickbacks from his government contracts back to the Kirchners.
Baez denies any wrongdoing. He also denies that he has any business ventures outside of Argentina--let alone shell companies in the American desert.
The way Baez tells it, he’s only a good friend of the Kirchners; The kind of friend who allegedly rents out 90 hotel rooms from the Kirchners’ boutique hotel a year--rooms that stay empty, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The kind of friend who offers to pay $1.6 million in eight installments for a property worth $1.5 million--as long as $200,000 of the last installment go to the President’s reelection campaign.
Baez also built the mausoleum in which Nestor Kirchner’s body rests.
One can only imagine what Paul Singer was thinking when he heard about all this. His pursuit of Argentina’s funds has shown no limits, and his tracking skills have led him to assets everywhere from Belgium to Elon Musks company, Space X.
“We’re not terribly sensitive to where the money is,” said Cohen on a conference call to journalists on Thursday.
New Post has been published on FSRN
New Post has been published on http://fsrn.org/2014/03/jubilee-usa-files-amicus-brief-in-landmark-vulture-fund-case/
Jubilee USA files Amicus brief in landmark "vulture fund" case
The debt relief organization Jubilee USA Network and 75 other religious and development groups filed an Amicus brief with the US Supreme Court today in a case that pits Argentina against NML Capital. The outcome of the case will likely set a precedent for debt restructuring practices between so-called “vulture funds” and developing countries. For more on the case, we’re joined by Eric LeCompte, Executive Director of Jubilee USA.
http://fsrn.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/03242014JubileeUSA.mp3
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(Photo: Protest outside office of Elliott Advisors, owners of vulture fund NML Capital, on eve of Argentinian government appeal hearing in New York, 26 February 2013. Credit: Flickr user Drop The Debt under Creative Commons license.)
Funds offer way to avert default by Argentina
Financial Times
10/24/13
By Benedict Mander in Buenos Aires
The acrimonious legal battle between a group of hedge funds and Argentina that could tip the country into default, and make future sovereign debt restructurings harder, may yet enjoy a happy ending if a nifty plan floated by a rival group of hedge funds succeeds.
Under the scheme, which illuminates the dog-eat-dog style of the hedge fund world, Argentine exchange bondholders, who hold $28bn of restructured Argentine debt, would agree to pay so-called holdout creditors, who hold up to $8bn of defaulted debt, to stop their legal attempts to get Argentina to pay them in full.
Argentina's bonds and foreign exchange reserve
IN CAPITAL MARKETS
If that happened, the holdouts would get a higher payout; exchange bondholders would see the value of their Argentine debt rise as the threat of default is lifted, more than compensating them for the cross payment; while Buenos Aires could crow it had not caved in to what it calls “vulture funds” and also regain access to international markets.
It is a “win-win-win” solution for all three parties, says one source at a large exchange bondholder fund familiar with the discussions in the marketplace: “It’s just a question of getting everyone to the table at the same time . . . all that is needed is for the holdouts and exchange bondholders to come to terms on economics.”
Marcelo Etchebarne, an Argentine lawyer who follows the issue closely, agrees the plan makes sense. “Argentina upholds its public policy, [exchange] bondholders get the value of their bonds to go up and [holdout] plaintiffs get a better deal,” he said. “Otherwise we may face a default again next year . . . and everybody loses.”
That possibility of default arises because the holdouts, led by Elliott Management, recently won a New York legal ruling that effectively ordered Argentina to repay their bonds in full even though that could trigger a default.
Gramercy Funds Management, which has supported Argentina in its legal battle against the holdouts, is thought to be behind the scheme. They form part of a group of bondholders with restructured Argentine debt that also includes BlackRock, MFS Investment Managament, Alliance Bernstein and Brevan Howard.
Under the mooted plan, yet to be formally presented to either the Argentine government or holdout creditors, exchange bondholders would forego 20 per cent of their bond coupon payments for the next five years in return for Elliott abandoning its legal battle against Buenos Aires.
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One novelty of the scheme is that it represents an inter-creditor solution, effectively removing Argentina from the equation and neutralising its promise not to pay holdout creditors a penny more than the bondholders who accepted restructured bonds following the country’s $82bn 2001 default – still the world’s largest ever.
Indeed, the exchange bondholder likened the country’s legal battle with holdout creditors, which may go to appeal at the US Supreme Court, as a fight between “an irresistible force and an immovable object”.
Argentina upholds its public policy, [exchange] bondholders get the value of their bonds to go up and [holdout] plaintiffs get a better deal. Otherwise we may face a default again next year
- Marcelo Etchebarne, an Argentine lawyer
However, a spokesman for NML Capital, one of the holdout litigants, was sceptical about the plan, citing Argentina’s unwillingness to negotiate: “It is absurd to think that Argentina’s debts can be resolved without Argentina’s participation. [We] have asked repeatedly for negotiations with Argentina, but Argentina appears to remain unwilling to come to the table.”
Charles Blitzer, a former IMF official, was also doubtful, describing the dream as “seductive but not persuasive”. One big sticking point is it would require 75 per cent of all exchange bondholders to agree to a plan which, in effect, cuts the value of their holdings.
“It’s a pipe dream,” he said. “The free rider problems are enormous.”
Be that as it may, the only other alternative to the impasse at the moment seems to be more legal wrangling. Argentina this week hired Paul Clement, a former US Solicitor General, to help in its defence, a move that could increase the likelihood of the US Supreme Court hearing Argentina’s appeal and so drag out this nearly decade-long case even longer.
Perhaps most important of all, little can also happen without at least a nod from Cristina Fernández, the Argentine president, who has not been seen in public since she was rushed to hospital for an operation on October 7 following a head injury and has since been placed under strict doctors’ orders to observe a 30-day period of total rest.
