Although the exact amount is not defined yet, the national state will have to pay -again- billions of dollars for the way YPF has expropriated. It will be the second disbursement. The first was done to the Spanish company Repsol and was worth 5,000 million dollars.
Almost 11 years ago, when YPF was expropriated, former Economy Minister Axel Kicillof (current governor of Buenos Aires province) he scoffed at the $10 billion that could be paid for the expropriation.
“We won’t pay what they say, but the real cost of the company. They say it’s $10,000 million. And where is it?”, challenged Kicillof during his tenure in Congress. Between the $5 billion that has already been paid to Repsol and the billions that will be paid in 2024, the one figure that Kicillof denied — the $10 billion — could be in the final range or even surpassed.
“The numbers that the managers themselves talked about in a very rash way on the value of the company will have to be reviewed as we can discover the intricacies and secret information that the company managed”, said the former minister, who -also- has highlighted a possible debt for environmental damage.
“Only from the inside will we know what the environmental liabilities are, which surely many of them haven’t been exposed in their books, their balance sheets,” he said.
Julio De Vido, the former Minister of Urban Planning (twice sentenced to prison for various government acts), was with Kicillof at that exhibition. “Repsol will have to pay for the environmental damage. We are carrying out an investigation,” he ventured.
“The value will be determined by the Court of Appraisal, and that will be the corresponding value,” Kicillof said in that case. “After that, he (for Antonio Brufau, the head of the Spanish oil company Repsol) can complain wherever he wants, denounce it to the World Bank, the IMF, the FBI or the CIA,” he counterattacked.
The trial that Argentina lost in the first instance to the United States is a major blow to the policy that Néstor and Cristina Kirchner followed towards YPF and which did not start with the expropriation of the oil company in 2012, but much earlier . It took Kirchnerism several years to gain control of the Argentine oil company and cost the state billions in the process.
In 2008, at the instigation of Néstor Kirchner, the Eskenazi family, owners of Banco de Santa Cruz, bought 14% of YPF for about 2,000 million dollars. For this operation they make use of two companies that assemble in Spain: Petersen Energy and Peterson InvestorHalf of the amount is paid with a loan from a consortium of banks headed by Credit Suisse and guaranteed only with the shares of the oil company. The other $1,000 million is being loaned by Repsol itself to the Eskenazi, who intend to pay it with the dividends they get from YPF’s exploitation. .
In May 2011, the Eskenazis increased their stake in YPF by another 10%, whereby they now have 25.46%. For that 10% they pay 1,304 million dollars with a scheme similar to the previous acquisition: 700 million dollars from a bank loan and the other 600 million dollars from a loan from Repsol itself.
In need of money, Cristina Kirchner’s government expropriated 51% of YPF’s shares in April 2012, but without touching the Eskenazi share. It only takes the shares that belonged to Repsol. Previously, it drives the share price down by freezing the value of fuels and taking exploration areas within the country away from YPF.
Source: Clarin
