Judge Alejo Ramos Padilla has suspended a decree issued last Thursday by President Javier Milei ordering Banco Nación, a public bank, to be turned into a limited company. The move would have allowed part of the bank’s shares to be sold to private investors.

The Tuesday ruling came in response to a complaint-and-stay request filed by a group of Banco Nación workers on Thursday. In it, Ramos Padilla said that the president’s decree (116/2025) doesn’t have a legal basis to turn Banco Nación into a limited company, and that Congress is the only state power that can change its legal status.

Days after he took office, Milei issued a mega-decree (70/23) that all state-owned companies, as well as firms partially owned by the state, would be converted into limited companies. 

This decree served as the legal basis for Milei’s latest order. However, Ramos Padilla ruled that he “could not detect an explicit inclusion” of Banco Nación in the previous 70/23 decree, which only mentions companies owned fully or partially by the state and “does not mention self-governed entities,” such as the bank. A self-governed entity is state-owned but chooses its own management and has a different legal set-up than other public ventures.

The creation of a self-governed entity such as Banco Nación “falls under the National Congress…[which is] the only state power that can revoke that status,” the judge said.

Ramos Padilla also contested the validity of Milei’s flagship reform bill known as Ley Bases in this case. That bill gave Milei legislative powers for a year — a fact that is mentioned in the 116/2025 decree.

Banco Nación was originally included in a list of over 40 state-owned companies Milei intended to privatize in the legislation but was ultimately dropped due to a lack of support for the measure.

The judge added that Congress already made clear its will “to exclude Banco de la Nación Argentina as one of the entities to be privatized” at the time. He continued that decree 116/2025 “may have exceeded the limits established by Congress” when it gave Milei legislative powers because the president is attempting to circumvent an agreement reached by Congress not to privatize Banco Nación.

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