Friday, November 7, 2014

Argentina faces u$s4.7 billion claim in 'me too' debt suits

New York district judge Thomas Griesa.

Argentina told New York district judge Thomas Griesa that bondholders filed 25 lawsuits since June, when the judge ordered blocking the nation from paying its restructured debt without also paying a group of holdouts, Bloomber news has reported.

With the initiative, investors seek to profit from his order, filing “me too” suits, many of which have already won judgments on the defaulted bonds. The claim sums up to u$s4.7 billion.

The Argentine lawyer, Carmine Boccuzzi, told Griesa in a letter yesterday that holders of Argentina’s defaulted debt will seek to have his 2012 order applied in their cases, and argued Argentina cannot be compelled to paying in full.

“There can be no equitable basis for seeking to compel the Republic, whose reserves are approximately $28 billion and must be used for critical macroeconomic purposes, to do the impossible by paying in full its holdout debt,” Boccuzzi said in the letter.