Daniel Santoro
02/07/2021 12:00 AM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 02/07/2021 12:00 AM
Elisa Carrió and her bloc of national deputies will denounce President Alberto Fernández and Vice President Cristina Kirchner, among others, on Monday for
the supposed emptying of YPF and maneuvers with the renegotiation of the oil company's debt.
Spokesmen for Carrió announced that the modifications in the offer to negotiate its debt made by the board of YPF -controlled by La Cámpora- caused in recent days
a considerable fall and rise in the shares of the oil company on Wall Street.
The pressure from Cristina Kirchner to remove the outgoing YPF president, Guillermo Nielsen, and his replacement by the deputy governor of Santa Cruz, Pablo Gonzalez, "
further increased the ups and downs of shares,"
the complaint says.
"This fact caused fluctuations in the price of the shares, allowing all kinds of
financial speculation and significant earnings to those who had inside information
," warns the presentation accessed by Clarín.
The presentation, written by the deputy and lawyer specializing in the energy issue Paula Oliveto, affirms that "it is implausible to think that these events
do not have the endorsement of President Alberto Fernández and Cristina Kirchner
".
Carrió will send the complaint by lottery but surely the Federal Chamber will send it due to connection to a cause that federal judge Ariel Lijo has.
YPF will disclose on Monday
the results of the debt swap
that it proposed to a group of holders of its bonds totaling some US $ 6.6 billion.
Then, on Monday it will be known if it managed to restructure the short maturity that it plans for March 23 by US $ 412 million so as not to fall into default.
In recent weeks, Carrió's complaint adds, “the company changed the conditions and proposed to reschedule all its bonuses up to the sum of 6.227 million dollars.
In other words, not only those with a close maturity date but all the bonds ”.
That initial proposal “
generated a collapse in the value
of the shares both in the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange and in the New York Stock Exchange.
The company offered three papers that paid neither interest nor capital until December 31, 2022 ”.
"This maneuver again caused a decrease in the value of the shares and
obviously that was the real objective of such a ridiculous initial proposal
," he said.
On January 25 and before the rejection of the bondholders, “YPF modifies the offer.
Among the changes it incorporated, it increased the interest rates that it will pay and shortened the amortization structure ”.
"The difference between the first proposal, which collapsed the share price, and the second proposal
is notorious and in no way can it be thought that it was the result of chance or the future of the markets,
" says Carrió's complaint.
In addition, it proposes
"a pledge on shares of its subsidiary YPF Luz
.
"
It is the company in charge of the production of renewable energies where "YPF has a dominant position and to a lesser extent General Electric and the Chinese state fund Silk Road Fund participate."
"It cannot be ignored that this unusual guarantee is made precisely with a firm dedicated to renewable energy, resources that will be essential for the sustainable development of our country," he added.
If YPF does not pay,
creditors will be able to keep YPF Luz
, he warned.
The fall in the value of the shares, on the one hand, causes profits for speculators but, on the other, “they harm their shareholders, among which is
the ANSeS Sustainability Guarantee Fund
and cause the under-financing of important projects such as Vaca Dead".
On the other hand, the presence of "members of the Cámpora in the YPF board of directors clears the direct path
to the use of the company as a political fund
and its consequent emptying".
For Carrió,
"the absence of coordination
in the decisions in the resolutions of its directors, with the economic team and the Central Bank was the starting point of
a new emptying process
."
The complaint warns if the real intention is not to "empty YPF" and
then sell it to a group of friendly businessmen at a low price.
The reported situations "
are fertile ground
for businessmen close to the governing party or their geopolitical interests" who do business with State subsidies.
“The purchase at a low price of Edenor by the Vila-Manzano group, among others, show this model where companies change owners
with very little investment
.
This is how an identical matrix is enshrined to the one already denounced when Eskenazi joined YPF ”, he added.
This maneuver was repeated in June last year, when President Alberto Fernández announced that the state would intervene and expropriate the Vicentin agro-export bank.
He wanted Vicentin's assets "to become part of a trust fund that
would be managed by YPF Agro,
a subsidiary company of the state-controlled oil company," he added.
“It is not understood then what is the objective of these decisions since it seems naive to argue only the absence of dollars since the import also requires a significant outlay of that currency.
This shows that there are other
spurious motives behind the measures,
"he added.
The complaint states that in the coming months oil and gas imports will increase due to the fall in YPF production.
Another fact that "sheds light on the depredation of YPF is the sale of the corporate building, located in Puerto Madero, for"
400 million dollars,
almost a third of the market value that the company presents today: 1,500 million dollars. "
For Carrió, the first emptying of YPF "occurred in 1992, during the Carlos Menem government and with the help of Néstor Kirchner, YPF was privatized."
In 2006 Carrió presented the first complaint to the Federal Justice where he asked to investigate "the process of emptying the Repsol YPF company due to the entry of the Petersen group" He recalled that after 2008, Alberto Fernández was a "consultant on current issues" for YPF -Repsol, due to steps taken by former President Kirchner himself.
In 2014, after Cristina's controversial renationalisation of YPF, the then Minister of Economy and current Buenos Aires governor Axel Kicillof
"paid Repsol 5,000 million dollars for 51% of the shares
, a scandalous move to the detriment of the Argentines."
In the complaint that Judge Lijo already has, Carrió requested the investigation of Kicillof and the former Secretary of Planning Coordination, Roberto Baratta.
"The figure that Kicillof paid to Repsol was
unjustifiably high
, definitively consummating the depletion of the company," he added.
Then the Spanish justice sold two Petersen Group companies that had YPF shares.
The Burford fund purchased the rights to litigate from those firms
.
As a culmination in 2015, a lawsuit began in New York that "could cost the country
between US $ 2.5 billion and US $ 14 billion
, stemming from the expropriation of YPF in 2012".
The Government of Cambiemos received in 2015 “a debt of US $ 8,560 million, from the management of Kirchnerism, of which
US $ 4,200 million were contracted after the expropriation of 51% of Repsol's shares, during the Galuccio / Kicillof administration.
, between 2012 and 2015 ”.
In the parts of the tests required of Justice, Carrió requested:
- Ask the US SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Securities Commission) to report
if there are complaints against YPF and if it received any type of sanction for changes in the value of its shares.
- The National Securities Commission is required to carry out
a detailed report
on the stock market movement of YPF shares since Alberto Fernández assumed the presidency
- The FIU is required to report whether
alerts
related to the purchase and sale of shares of YPF or its associates
were detected
from 2019 to the present.
- The Buenos Aires Stock Exchange is ordered to produce
a report
aimed at determining the fluctuations suffered by the shares of the Argentine oil company
- An urgent intervention is given to
a judicial overseer
in order to supervise the debt restructuring process denounced in order to preserve the country's assets
- The Sustainability Guarantee Fund is required to make
a detailed report regarding its shareholding in YPF.
