Paula Lugones
06/06/2020 - 17:04
- Clarín.com
- Economy
- Economy
For more than a decade Argentina was pending Thomas Griesa , the judge who dealt with vulture funds claims in New York . Now all eyes are on the woman who replaced him, Loretta Preska , 71, considered in the halls of the courts as a strict "diva" of justice who was even a candidate to be a judge of the United States Supreme Court.
After Griesa's death, in 2017, Preska is in charge of the Court of the Southern District of New York , the court where cases with jurisdiction of Wall Street companies or international financial controversies usually fall. That is why he was the protagonist of the ruling on Friday in the trial for the expropriation of YPF , in which he decided that the case (up to 5 billion dollars at stake) will continue its course in the United States and not in Argentina, as the Government. The presiding court, in addition, will be the one that receives the claim of the bondholders if the negotiations that are in progress fail and the country goes into default.
Born in Albany, the capital of New York State, the daughter of an engineer and a nurse, Preska studied law at Fordham University and New York University and later joined a private law firm where she worked between 1973 and 1992. Then he began his judicial career in the Court of the second district and was promoted to occupy the headquarters.
“According to an old law definition book, a judicial diva is a particularly confident, skillful, and physically attractive woman. According to this concept, Loretta Preska is a judicial diva. She is highly valued as a judge and administrator and always looks fabulous, ” wrote David Lat, an expert journalist in court.
Preska is about six feet tall, very slim but strong in build, with short gray hair and when not seen wrapped in the magistrates' traditional black robe, she wears dark high-end suits, decorated with different pins. they give it a chic touch. With her husband, Thomas Kavaler, they make up one of the couples considered to be one of the most powerful in New York : not only is she in charge of one of the most high-profile courts in Manhattan, with an incidence in many parts of the planet, but He is a partner in one of the most listed law firms, Cahill Gordon, founded in 1919, specialized in financial matters and with an income of nearly $ 400 million per year.
They both live in a penthouse on Manhattan's 72nd Street , on the sleek Upper East Side, which has three bedrooms and large windows looking out over the East River and bought for $ 8.7 million.
Considered a conservative trend, Preska was on President George W Bush's "short list" for a position on the United States Supreme Court to replace Sandra Day O'Connor, who eventually ended up occupying Samuel Alito.
Beyond Argentine records, she has starred in several high-profile cases in her career. In 1996 he ruled against actress Demi Moore , deciding that an image of actor Leslie Nielsen who appeared pregnant, imitating a famous photo of her, was only a legitimate parody. Another one she had in her hands was in 2006, when she decided in favor of MasterCard, which had started a trial against FIFA for breaking the advertising contract to grant it to VISA. In 2012, Preska handled the trial of the 28-year-old hacker Héctor Monsegur, known as "Sabu," who was part of the Anonymous group and who ended up cooperating with the FBI. In January of this year, she hit the front pages of the American media because she refused to release a leafy archive of documents about Jefferey Epstein, the millionaire financier who was accused of pedophilia and prostitution and who committed suicide in prison in August last year.
Now, from her office with wooden upholstered walls at Pearl Street at 500, in southern Manhattan, Judge Preska becomes - with the YPF trial and with possible bond litigation - the new protagonist of the New Yorkers. sensitive cases for Argentina.
