The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, celebrated a new victory this Friday (27) related to the trial against Argentina in the USA involving a billion-dollar dispute over the nationalization of the oil company YPF.
The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit of New York accepted a request presented by the Argentine government to nullify the evidence production process in order to comply with the payment order issued by the judge in the YPF case, Loretta Preska, of the federal court for the Southern District of New York, in 2023.
In total, the country would have to pay US$16 billion in compensation for the nationalization of YPF, determined by the government of Cristina Kirchner (2007-2015) and approved in 2012 by the Argentine Parliament. The document approved at the time established that the State would retain 51% of the oil company, which was in the hands of the Spanish oil company Repsol.
The case was opened in New York courts in 2015, when the British company Burford Capital and the American company Eton Park acquired the litigation rights of two companies incorporated in Spain and which went bankrupt: Petersen Energía Inversora and Petersen Energía.
Burford Capital and Eton Park claimed billion-dollar compensation at the trial, alleging that the Argentine State should have launched a public takeover bid for the remaining shares that did not belong to Repsol. The judge responsible for the case ruled in favor of the businessmen and ordered the billion-dollar payment in 2023, and two years later, she also decided that Argentina cede its 51% stake in the oil company to the litigating firms.
President Javier Milei celebrated this Friday’s decision, criticizing political opponents, such as the governor of the province of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof, who was Minister of Economy at the time the expropriation of the oil company was decided.
“We had to come and fix the mistakes of the useless, imbecile and incompetent (Axel) Kicillof during the second government of the corrupt and imprisoned Cristina Kirchner,” said Milei during a political event.
Earlier, the Argentine president had used his social networks to describe the decision in the USA as “the greatest legal achievement in national history”.
