An NGO is attempting to join the YPF oil and gas company expropriation case in New York. It is requesting that Judge Loretta Preska dismiss the 2023 sentence condemning Argentina to pay US$16.1 billion. Republican Action for Argentina’s ex-parte motion argues that the nationalized shares were previously obtained through corruption.

In a letter sent to Preska on Monday night, Argentina agreed to cooperate with the investigation proposed by the NGO, saying that the government, “under President Milei, takes all allegations of corruption very seriously.” In a separate letter to the judge, Burford, the hedge fund that won the case, said the NGO’s “motion must be denied both because it is untimely and because [the NGO] has no interest in this litigation.”

In 2008, four years before the expropriation, Petersen, a newly formed business group, bought 25% of the YPF stake from the Spanish company Repsol. Ezkenazis, a traditional family in Santa Cruz province, owned the group.

“The Ezkenazis got into YPF virtually without paying a dime for the buyout, which was financed through credits given by Repsol and financial institutions. Those credits were to be repaid with company profits,” Fernando Irazu, head of Republic Action for Argentina, told the Herald. According to Irazu, the Ezkenazis were frontmen for former President Néstor Kirchner and his wife, then-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

A leaked intelligence report produced during Mauricio Macri’s administration posited the same theory.

A spokesperson for the Petersen Group denied the allegations, saying the “buyout complied with all transparency and regulatory requirements of the Argentine, Spanish, and U.S. supervisory agencies.”

In 2012, Argentina expropriated 51% of the shares of YPF. Three years later, British hedge fund Burford Capital bought the rights to litigate and took Argentina to court, claiming the country had failed to make a tender offer to buy their YPF shares when it nationalized the company, incurring significant losses for them as a result.

In 2023, Preska ordered Argentina to pay the plaintiffs US$16.1 billion for breach of contract during the nationalization.

“This lawsuit was initiated in 2015. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was the president of our country, and the sentence came out in September 2023, she was the vice president of our country. This is not a minor fact,” Irazu stressed. “The trial was set up as an honest civil or commercial dispute between the Eskenazis and the Argentine government, but that was not the case. Why did they not say something before during all these years? Because the government and YPF were both controlled by the Kirchners” he added.

In his letter, Irazu alleged “an international criminal conspiracy and/or scheme impacting these legal proceedings at the core” and said the goal is “to consummate fraud and money laundering.” He added that those alleged crimes deserve “proper investigation and eventual indictments.”

He added that, if Burford is paid by the government, the Petersen Group would collect part of the money. A spokesperson to the Petersen Group told the Herald that is not the case. 

“Burford bought the bankruptcy trial from the Spanish courts and with it the rights to litigate against Argentina,” he added, saying that the Petersen Group is “totally on the sidelines and has no interference whatsoever in any judicial process related to YPF.”

Irazu based his arguments on a lawsuit against the Kirchners filed by the Coalición Cívica leader Elisa Carrió in 2006. He filed the complaint in federal court under Judge Ariel Lijo who, according to the Coalición Cívica Deputy Juan Manuel López, has not advanced much. On Tuesday, Lijo was appointed as a Supreme Court justice via a controversial executive order.

“Last year, we told Judge Lijo to present the evidence he collected in the U.S., and Lijo did nothing,” he told the Herald.

Last month, Preska ordered Argentina to hand over information on the Central Bank’s gold reserves per a request filed by Burford, who is trying to seize national assets to partly pay for the lawsuit.