Rafael Gutiérrez, president of the Supreme Court of Justice of Santa Fe.
The Santa Fe Supreme Court of Justice intervened in Vicentin’s bankruptcy procedure. He ordered the civil and commercial judge Fabián Lorenzini to forward the file and suspended the terms of the judicial process that began in February 2020 and was due to end in the coming weeks.
In a letter signed by Rafael Gutiérrez, president of the highest court of Santa Fe, Lorenzini was informed this Thursday that the request for a vocation (a power that allows a superior to know a case whose knowledge would normally correspond to an inferior) was considered accepted and accepted, requested by the broker Grassi, a medium-sized agri-food company, which is one of Vicentin’s main creditors and which strongly rejected the payment proposal.
The decision came shortly after the end of the “exclusivity period” (the time allowed for the company to offer a payment agreement). This is a measure considered unprecedented, because the Court is a review body, and in this case it takes a file that had not been defined at first instance.
The letter, dated this Thursday 16 in Santa Fe, has a short text. He says: “For receipt. Of the request for certiorari, transfer to the bankruptcy procedure judge. Once the same has been evacuated, the file must be sent for the purposes that this Court can release with the main documents in sight. Suspend the terms that ran.”
Hence the request of Grassi, which was made on the grounds that the president of Vicentin, Omar Scarel, is in criminal proceedings and if the dispute is resolved later there would be no possibility of compensation.
Timing is crucial, because at the end of this month or early July, Judge Lorenzini would have approved the payment agreement presented by Vicentin, one of the main points of which is to make an initial payment of $ 30,000 to each. creditors. That figure covers the debt with the 800 smaller creditors but does not constitute the average ones like Grassi.
Having already reached the majority of the capitalizations required by the competition, the guarantee of the banks remained, which represents two thirds of the capital due. This is the other condition for the competition to advance and Lorenzini was preparing to approve the agreement, even if the main asset to be sold to pay the debt (the 33% of Renova that Vicentin still owns and that he would sell to Viterrra, one of the three Strategic Stakeholders) has been inhibited in criminal justice.
Scarel, in fact, was detained for 48 hours (between Monday 6 and Wednesday 8) accused of having disobeyed the court order not to innovate. Prosecutors Sebastián Narvaja and Miguel Moreno accused him of the possible transfer of 33.33% of Vicentin’s shares in Renova, Viterra, even though the operation was not carried out because it would have taken place if the bankruptcy agreement was finalized.
The first step that the Court will take is to ask Lorenzini for an explanation on what has been done. Furthermore, what developed by the union and the payment proposal presented by Vicentin will be examined.
Since there are no historians of an intervention of this type, the specialized jurists venture on how the process will continue, but in any case they assume that the terms of the resolution will take longer than estimated until days ago.
News in development
Source: Clarin
