At the end of 2011, Cristina Kirchner began her second presidential term. I had already set the exchange shares. THE energy imports they were close to $10,000 million, and the then president believed that YPF needed to invest more so that the country would import less. In that task he put Axel Kicillofwho was Deputy Minister of Economy at that time.
It was Kicillof who brought ideas to Fernández de Kirchner for the expropriation of the company. The state captured 51% of the company. At first, the government didn’t want to talk about prices. A decade later, their assumptions (not to pay) appear to have failed. The decision not to launch a public offering of shares has economic cost consequences that are still difficult to measure.
“We will not pay them for what they say, as Mr. (Antonio) Brufau (head of Repsol, shareholder of 51% of the company) wants: 10,000 million dollars. Where? In the speculation that they ordered to do a few days that they thought to sell the shares? (…) Idiots are those who think that the state should be stupid and buy everything according to the law of the YPF itself, respecting its status!”Kicillof bellowed in a public presentation to Congress.
Repsol ended up collecting more than 5 billion dollars for expropriated shares. And the country will have to fork out billions of dollars more when it has to pay for the cause it lost in New York. It would have had to make a public offering of shares – as stipulated in the company’s articles of association – for minority shareholders, according to the US judicial system.
This procedure is established in the event of a change of control of the company “Probably without violating any laws, probably, but we’ll see what they’ve done to the environment when we look around the area at what happened to the wells, where they’ve dumped every cubic meter of contaminated water. We’ll see what we find when we open the black box, which any private company knows how to hide very well when an inspector comes, when ten inspectors come”, Kicillof in the same parliamentary session.
Kicillof was appointed National State Representative in YPF. He was asked to appoint “key” officials. At the same time, Fernández de Kirchner was suggested the name of an Argentine executive who excelled in the multinational Schlumberger, oil services contractor: Miguel Galuccio.
Galuccio was named president of the company, and it was he who weaved the deal with Chevron and other advances from the oil company. Axel K, as the representative of the national state in the category of class A directors, was the official with the most power to dialogue with Miguel Galuccio, the president of YPF
On the YPF board were Kicillof e Emanuele Alvarez Agis. Kicillof was promoted from deputy minister to minister in 2013 (replacing Hernán Lorenzino). And as second to him was Alvarez Agis, he also passed through the oil company.
Other Axel envoys in the company were Rodrigo Cuesta, Nicolás Arceo, Patricia Charvay and Juan Domini. Among all, Arceo dealt with administration and finance, a key area. In Galuccio’s circle they praised him for his ability to work and for his intelligence.
While defending aspects of Kirchnerism, Arceo has become a consultant and is one of the most respected in the field. Charvay is also part of that company.
Source: Clarin
