es rauscht und rauscht.....nicht in den Segeln.....im Blätterwald

Frigate Libertad:

 

Ambito Financiero: “Timerman in New York for the “per saltum” of the frigate in the UN”

 

La Nacion: “Disappointment for having to leave the Frigate”

 

Pagina/12: “Air Sailors”

 

La Nacion: “Negotiations fail and an evacuation is ordered for the crew of the Libertad”

 

Clarin: “For ‘lack of guarantees,’ the President the government orders the Frigate Libertad evacuated”

 

Perfil: “Strong criticism for the President over the crisis”

 

Clarin: “Anguish of the families in a letter to Cristina”

 

Clarin: “‘Give us Messi and take the Frigate back home’”

 

La Nacion: “They are also waiting for 7-D in Ghana”

 

La Nacion: “The Argentine bondholders also ask for a response”

 

Clarin: “The government will now turn to the UN to free the Frigate”

 

La Nacion: “The government warns Ghana it will go to the UN”

 

La Nacion: “What to do to free Libertad”

 

Veintitres: “High flying operation”

 

·         In today’s Charlas de Quincho column in AF, there is the following passage dedicated to the Libertad issue:

“Not only did the bad news from Ghana precipitate the decision to evacuation to go to the United Nations to turn to the fishing line of international bureaucracy.  It was also the result of a brainstorming session among officials googling people and personalities in an exercise that allowed conclusions that open some path for discussing it at the highest levels of the UN.  The first direction came in the response to the question: who is the most famous Ghanaian in the world?  Response: Kofi Annan, ex-Secretary General of the UN for two terms (1997-2006).

 

Who is Annan’s friend for having shared tasks in the organization during the term in which he won the Nobel Peace Prize which labeled him a man of agreements, a profile that didn’t serve for mediating the civil war in Syria, the task that the UN gave him and that he resigned from in August?  Response: Nancy Soderberg, former alternate representative from the government of Bill Clinton to the UN and who today is co-chairwoman of the group ATFA, the vulture funds lobby that sued Argentina in the name of the mocking bondholders and who managed to capture the frigate in Ghana.  La Soderberg, who was previously in espionage in her country (she was the number three in the National Security Council), shared the leadership of the ATFA lobby with Robert Shapiro, who was assistant secretary of Commerce to Clinton, and who also was contracted by the “vultures” to promote the anti-Argentine lobby.

 

This information alone allowed the Argentine officials who are at the UN today (Timerman, Jorge Arguello, philosopher Marita Perceval –who debuts as representative to the UN – and Vice Foreign Minister Eduardo Zuain) to mount the first scenario of this new battle: to show the relationship between Annan and Soderberg, his Ghanaian nationality – from far away he is the most prestigious man from his country in the world – and exploit his profile as Nobel laureate and expert mediator.  If he wasn’t in the plot which ended in the court order to detain the frigate in the port of Tema,  he is forced to be at the center of some chapter of the negotiation.  Annan is traveling throughout the world today presenting a memoir and trying to keep up his activity.  He left his post under odious – but still unproven – accusations of tolerating episodes of sexual assault among officials (they came to tell him about it) and goes around the world with his second wife, a Swiss woman who is none other than the granddaughter of Raoul Wallenberg, hero of World War II as a savior of the Jews in the embassy of his country in Budapest.  He was detained in 1945 by the communists and remains today (he’d be 100 years old) a ‘disappeared’ man in the Soviet gulag.  These perceptions generate the idea that Buenos Aires should put Annan into the bingo game as he could facilitate a negotiation in the center of the international scene.

 

He owes something to Argentina and to the Kirchner governments, to whom he wanted to approach without luck after being at the center of one of the first clashes with Nestor.  It was in 2003, when the new president went to speak at the UN and met with Annan to propose that he designate Chacho Álvarez as head of the CEPAL (Economic Commission for Latin America, created by Argentina’s Raúl Prebish). Annan said that for that job it had to be an economist and Chacho was a history professor.  Attending the meeting were various government officials -Aníbal Fernández, José Bordón, Rafael Bielsa, Ginés González García, Miguel Pichetto, José María Díaz Bancalari- and an opponent, Marcelo Stubrin. It was the times when the government invited adversaries along on presidential trips, and Annan had no other idea but that he’d had the proposal of another Argentine, José Luis Machinea, and asked if he had Argentina’s support.  Kirchner left the meeting furious, never responded to Annan’s question, and froze relations with the UN Secretary General, who years later asked to come to Argentina and they told him not to.  Nor did Annan act as the government expected in 2006, when they saw each other in a summit in Vienna and Kirchner was waiting for some kind of gesture over the fight at that time with Uruguay over the paper pulp mill in Fray Bentos.  It was on that trip that Evangelina Carrozzo of Entre Rios passed in front of the leaders in a thong asking for them to side with the country in this fight.  Not even that move brought Kirchner to Annan, a “ladies’ man”.  The name of the former secretary general inspired, as such, the trips of Carlos Ruckauf to New York (where he met with him) which were baptized as “Kofi breaks” and on the Golan Heights, the territory disputed by Syria and Israel, the Israelis called a hotel resort with a pretty view of the Syrian territory “Coffee Annan”. “

 

 

Argentine Politics/Global Relations:

 

Clarin: “The sycophant who became foreign minister”

 

Clarin: “Money laundering: there was praise, but Argentina remains on the gray list”

 

·         El Cronista reports today that Hernan Lorenzino will go to the G-20 finance ministers’ meeting in Mexico in early November to rail against the ratings agencies.

·         Clarin reports today that Moshen Rabbani, one of the Iranians accused in the bombing of the AMIA, gave an interview to Folha de Sao Paulo (Brazil) on Sunday where he says he has good relations with former officials of the Menem administration, and that Argentina and Iran have “good reasons” to overcome the issue in the bilateral relationship: “Iran is one of the biggest buyers of Argentine wheat, rice, beef and olive oil.”

 

Argentine Economy:

 

·         Today’s La Nacion has a story based on a survey the newspaper made of food prices in Buenos Aires supermarkets, compared with those published on the websites of supermarkets in Madrid, Sao Paulo, London and New York City.  The survey found it is as expensive to shop for food in Buenos Aires as it is in New York and London, and more expensive than Madrid. 

·         Meanwhile, Saturday’s La Nacion reports that Guillermo Moreno, in an interview with Nuestra Palabra, the newspaper of the local Communist Party, denied there is an “uncontrolled inflationary process” underway in Argentina and that “inflation is what the government officially measures it to be.”  He added that the IMF, economic consultants and banks are exaggerating inflation data so financial entities can collect higher interest and that they want to generate a climate of destabilization, pushed by sectors that oppose the changes put in course by President Cristina Kirchner.  He added: “There are many useful idiots, like some consumer associations, who join in to talk of a different inflation than INDEC’s, and in this way they get covered by Clarin, and this is how interests join forces.”

 

 

Argentine Society:

 

• Sunday’s La Nacion reported that Cristina has ordered the entire Cabinet and all the government’s agencies to mobilize – whether it is relevant to their work or not – and join the “all or nothing” crusade to implement the Media Law in December and publicly support the dismantling of Clarin Group’s media empire.  An op-ed in La Nacion added that the Media Law’s implementation will be a godsend for the “yanquis” – US-owned media providers are expected to have the cash and interest in moving in to buy their way in to the country after dominant groups are broken up and sold off, particularly cable TV networks.

 

JORGE ARGUELLO on Twitter and Blog:

 

·         As part of his contribution to Cristina’s “all-or-nothing” campaign on the Media Law, he published an op-ed in Perfil where he points out that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that limiting ownership of media companies is a “reasonable way to promote diverse points of view” and that ownership rules in the media “do not imply manipulation of content.”

·         He also tweeted links to old ‘vulture funds’ pieces on his blog.

 

TRENDING TOPICS/ARGENTINA on Twitter:

 

·         No political topics in today’s top 10.

 

Ambito Financiero

Timerman in New York for the “per saltum” of the frigate in the UN

 

Monday, October 22, 2012

 

By Carlos Burgueño

 

Argentina is ruling out no options.  Not even severing relations with Ghana, if in a short time the frigate Libertad is not released from the port of Tema.  For now, all of the cannons are pointed against the government of the African country that is led by John Dramani Mahama; beginning today when Hector Timerman accuses the country before the UN Security Council of violations of human rights and the treaty of Vienna.  It will be the first step in the offensive against the African country: then begins the formal accusation to take the release of the frigate to the UN body that regulates the Law of the Sea, the International Court of Hamburg.

 

This week, and almost in secret, the operation will unfold to repatriate most of the crew of the frigate Libertad.  It will be through a charter flight contracted by the Argentine government, possibly from South African Airways or some Brazilian (Tam) or European (Alitalia) country, airlines with whom they have good bilateral trade relations and which can go to the African country.  The decision to contract a charter is to avoid an attachment on an aircraft from Aerolíneas Argentinas, information that was given by the Argentine delegation in Ghana led by vice ministers Eduardo Zuain (Foreign Relations) and Alfredo Forti (Defense).  The sailors will have to end up signing a bureaucratic, bothersome and suspicious set of paperwork that would allow them to leave the country via a different means than they entered by.  The mission of the Libertad arrived in the port of Tema through a sea transit permit, and as members of a teaching vessel.  Their exit through an airport would not be allowed a priori, and will need a permit and special visa from the Ghanaian government which is being processed now.  While this obligatory paperwork is not complete, there will be no formal declaration of the worsening of relations between Argentina and Ghana.

 

The decision to terminate negotiations with the Ghanaian government and begin a stage of diplomatic confrontation was taken Friday by Cristina de Kirchner.  It was when the President found out about the mechanisms that could have mobilized the Ghanaian judge, Richard Adjei Frimpong, from accepting the filing of the vulture fund MNL Elliott (sic).  According to Argentine information, there is a very close relationship in the willingness of the judge to defend Elliott’s presentation.   Argentina then confirmed it: it’s the little will from the Mahama government to strongly represent the country before Frimpong’s court.  There was even word of some kind of requirement from the Ghanaian government similar to the mechanism with which the Elliott fund of American magnate Peter (sic) Singer convinced Frimpong.  Them, between Wednesday and Thursday of last week, some kind of particular pressure was registered against the frigate and its crew, which determined the presidential decision to evacuate and denounce the case before the UN.

 

Timerman today will ask for a meeting of the UN Security Council where he will denounce Ghana for reiterated violations of human rights, international financial treaties and international financial crimes.  The basis for the future presentation against Ghana will be for the application and the eventual violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (CDM), considered to be the constitution of the oceans.  This treaty was approved on April 30, 1982 in New York and open for signing by the member states in December of that year in Montego Bay (Jamaica) in the 182nd plenary session of the III UN Conference on the Law of the Sea.  It went into force on November 16, 1994, after the 60th ratification (by Guyana).

 

The treaty was ratified immediately both by Argentina and Ghana.  The organ of application is the International Tribunal of Hamburg, Germany, where Argentina could appeal to two particular bodies: the Chamber for Disputes or the Chamber for Summary Procedure.  In the first, there are the votes of 21 members, and Argentina’s intention is that it rule to release the ship, applying Article 292 of the Convention, which speaks of “freeing ships and their crews (Article 292 of the Convention).”

 

According to that article, war ships and other state vessels destined to non-commercial ends are protected by sovereign immunity and, consequently, are free of requisition and attachment.  Argentina also is studying going to the Chamber of Summary Procedure.  In this case, it will seek that body to determine that the detention of the frigate violates human rights and navigation in a visible manner, with which it would merit summary treatment (extreme rapidity) for its release.  Before any presentation in the Hamburg court, the government will have to make its presentation before the United Nations, the procedure that Timerman will make today at the organization’s headquarters in New York.

 

The frigate is detained in the port of Tema since October 2 with a crew of 326 people, mostly Argentines, while there are also sailors invited from Venezuela, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, Paraguay and Ecuador. Of all of these, the official Argentine decision is to maintain only Captain Lucio Salonio as the top responsible figure of the frigate.  He would have a direct line with the Defense Ministry and Foreign Ministry to denounce any kind of problem or quarrel against him during the future stay in Tema.  Today will possibly unfold the final match at the Juan Domingo Perón sports center: the ground that the Argentines took as their own on the Tema pier, where the frigate Libertad awaits its fate.

 

 

La Nacion

Disappointment for having to leave the Frigate

 

Monday, October 22, 2012

 

By Elisabetta Piqué

 

TEMA, Ghana.- Depressed over the order for immediate evacuation given two nights ago by President Cristina Kirchner, the more than 300 crew members of the Frigate Libertad began to prepare to leave the ship “as quickly as possible”.  However, they didn’t come back yesterday, as was thought, but the operation will take place in the coming days.

 

According to what LA NACION could learn, the evacuation plan is being handled by the Defense Ministry, which was analyzing the possibility of contracting a charter plane, probably European, to repatriate the sailors “within two or three days”.  While evaluating the costs, they ruled out the use of a plane from Aerolíneas Argentinas or the Armed Forces, for the risk of it also being attached by the same complaint of the vulture funds that blocked the Frigate.  

 

"How are we?  Let down: nobody wants to leave the ship here, it’s a shame,” said a sailor that, from the ship, answered LA NACION’s question posed from the pier.  “We don’t know when we’re going, but it will certainly be by plane,” he added.

 

Meanwhile, the crew could be advised to prepare some concrete information for the departure: every sailor was carrying his life preserver, belonging to the Frigate, which was being held in a deposit in the bow.

 

In view of the news of the evacuation from the President, yesterday, on the wharf there appeared various reporters from the international media and news agencies.  Under a brutal sun and impossible humidity, the reporters were on guard from an early hour to capture images of the “immediate evacuation”, which still hasn’t occurred.  “Why doesn’t anyone want to give us information about the evacuation?” the Ghanaian reporters asked, incredulous at the attitude of secrecy from Argentine authorities, who would only say that “we have no information.”

 

Precisely due to the lack of official data, great confusion reigns.  At noon, on the pier appeared Jacob Kwabla Adorkor, director of the port of Tema, astonished and saying that he’d not received any official communication of the order to evacuate and had been informed by one of the reporters present.

 

"No official communication and without having submitted immigration paperwork to be done at the same port, because this is the port of entry, I cannot let anyone leave to go directly to the airport,” Adorkor told LA NACION.  With the passing of hours, however, it began to be clear there would be no immediate departure for the airport.

 

To coordinate the evacuation plan, a little before noon the Argentine mission present in Ghana arrived at the Frigate.  Then, together with the ambassador to Nigeria, Susana Pataro ,and the consul also in Nigeria, Sebastián Zabala, who came to this ex-colony of Britain because it has no diplomatic representation, suddenly there appeared Vice Minister Eduardo Zuain and Defense Vice Minister Alfredo Forti.  The Foreign Ministry had erroneously reported that Zuain and Forti had ended their mission and returned to the country on Friday.  In turn, they began their return yesterday afternoon.  Zuain went through New York, where he’ll join the mission of Foreign Minister Hector Timerman at the UN.

 

Accompanied also by the attorney for the government of Ghana and the attorney from the firm of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LP, which is representing the country in all issues related to the bondholder claims, the Argentine delegation was received with all honors at the Frigate.  An official with an impeccable white uniform sounded the trumpet to greet them and the guard sailors were in party dress, with blue and white striped shirts, sash and Gaucho hats.

 

After a closed-door meeting inside the ship, in which one presumes the evacuation plan was coordinated, there was a celebration.  From the pier one could see waiters with trays offering wine and empanadas.

 

But among the crew there wasn’t a climate of a going away party.  “We’re sad, our mission was to return together with the ship on December 8 to Buenos Aires, not to end in this humiliating way… But what are you going to do?  We have to obey orders,” said a lieutenant, who added that the only ones contented by the evacuation were the families of the sailors.

 

Bitter because “after eight months, the Frigate is like our second home,” the same official admitted that without fuel it couldn’t last very long because “the generators, the pumps, the refrigerators and all the other systems of the ship don’t work.”

 

In this direction, it came out that the Ghanaian judge that, together with the attachment, decided to block the providing of fuel to the Frigate, letting it be known that he’d only reverse the decision after Argentina sat down and negotiates with its counterpart – the vulture funds – something unacceptable to Argentina.

 

The impression is that the government of Ghana, which is in the middle of an election campaign in view of the elections of December 7, finds itself in a “legal tight spot”.  Without imagining the that conflict of the Frigate would grow in this manner, it sought ways to settle the conflict, but without counting on instruments to reverse the judge’s decision.  Any intervention in that direction, in effect, would be seen as a subjugation of the independence of the judicial branch, something that could make them lose the elections.

 

Just as the working visit of the Argentine mission ended, a group of sailors dressed in civilian clothes, shorts and t-shirts, football jerseys and beach wear, left the Frigate and boarded three mini-buses, like the day before.  When will you evacuate?  “We don’t know.  For now, we’re going to the beach to enjoy the day,” said a sailor, with a sad and ironic smile. 

 

 

Pagina/12

Air Sailors

 

Sunday, October 21, 2012

 

By Horacio Verbitsky

 

The national government ordered the evacuation of the Frigate Libertad, detained in the Ghanaian port of Tema, and to rent a plane from a third country to bring back the 320 crew members of eight nationalities, in defense of “its sovereignty and its dignity”.  The decision by President CFK was announced shortly after 6:00pm by Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, who revealed the extortive conditions imposed by the judge in Ghana that retained the teaching vessel: if Argentina wouldn’t accept a negotiation with the vulture fund  “NML Capital Limited” the court would not authorize the resupplying of the ship.  Without fuel, the frigate could not feed its energy generators, which power the fire-fighting mechanisms, the bilge pumps, the kitchens, the freezers, the bathrooms, the showers and the lights.  Timerman, who after the press conference departed for New York, where tomorrow he will denounce this act of piracy in violation of international law and human rights before the President of the Security Council, was in permanent contact with Cristina since seven in the morning.  After approving the text, the president ordered the Foreign Minister to read it while Defense Minister Arturo Puricelli remain standing at his side in eloquent silence.  Puricelli assumed responsibility for all that happened and told the President that he wanted to return to the province of Santa Cruz, where he has a secure future with the rights of  service that a mining company pays him for exploitation of lands that belong to him.  Cristina answered that she decides when a minister leaves her government, which is an ominous bit of advice.  Puricelli recriminated himself for having been naive about the proposed itinerary from the Navy, which his ministry sent without comments to the Foreign Ministry to then ignore his warnings to the contrary.  For all of that, Cristina decided to remove the spearhead that the Navy used to colonize the Defense Ministry, the director of Strategic Military Intelligence, Lourdes Puente Olivera. In turn, it is still being discussed whether Secretary of Strategic and Military Affairs will remain; he is the uncle of the ex-director.  Cuattromo didn’t leave footprints from his intervention nor even in his orders to Brigadier Major Richard Goetze, who was the attaché in Buenos Aires of the Pentagon and Air Force of his country in the worst years of state terrorism and the death flights – nor in the fixing of the itinerary of the Frigate Libertad. In both cases, he managed to get the documents signed by Defense Secretary of Foreign Affairs Alfredo Forti, with the pretext that the instructors were coming from the United States and the Frigate would be traveling outside the country.  But Cuattromo and not Forti opened and closed the course.   Without resigning her character as Navy personnel, Lourdes also worked with the Coordinator General for Technical Affairs from the Unit President, Rafael Follonier. When the Navy pushed the designation of the woman at the front of the main intelligence agency at Defense, Follonier was consulted by the government.  He said that he knew her but wasn’t in a position to make guarantees about her.  For that, ex-minister Nilda Garre didn’t agree to designate her, something that Puricelli did very shortly after taking office.  (Yesterday, the bi-weekly “Perfil” attributed the designation to Garre, which is false).  Once her resignation was rejected, the minister defended the Cuattromo situation before the President, and the President responded that she would think about it.  Also unclear still is the fate of a group of ministerial advisors that came in together with the fired naval informant, friends of Puricelli’s daughter, graduates of private universities of the Catholic Church, with post-graduate degrees in institutes of the national security establishment of the United States, and/or collaborators of Clarin like Juan Battaleme, professor of the liberal think tank UADE-Ucema, which last month published an article that criticized UNASUR and praises the Pacific Alliance composed of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, countries that “serve as ports for units of the IV Fleet of the United States.”

 

The captain with five men

 

The decision to evacuate the frigate and bring back 320 crew members to Argentina also includes having Captain Pablo Lucio Salonio remain on board with a guard of five men while the political efforts continue and the legal appeals proceed.  The pressure on the national government to accept the negotiation that it is not prepared to have with the vulture funds included the distribution of extravagant information.  The newspaper Clarin argued on October 14 that the port cost for the Frigate Libertad was US$50,000 a day.  On the 19^th it made a small retraction, to US$49,000 per day, always according to non-specified sources.  Those from the Argentine government, which pays the bill, are very different: they are just over three thousand dollars a day, as seen in this chart. 

 

(Item/Cost in USD)

 

-Spring water – 350

-Transport   -- 1,380

-Telephones  -- 75

-Modems        -- 80

-Mineral water in bottles – 609

-Waste             --120

-Wharf             --240

-Assemblage   - 285.71

Total          3,139.71

 

Before the President ordered the evacuation, Timerman had scheduled to travel to Ethiopia to put the crisis before the African Union commission, and then would have returned to New York to present the case before the United Nations.  While that trip was suspended, the foreign ministry will send more attorneys to Accra to assist Forti and Foreign Relations Secretary Eduardo Zuain, as neither the political negotiations nor the judicial recourses will be interrupted by the return of the crew.  As a result of the political efforts made it was decided to bring the case before a court of appeals in Ghana.  This is an indispensable first step before going before the court in Hamburg that exercises jurisdiction on member countries of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.  In meetings held during the week that ends today with the Foreign Minister, Defense Minister and Attorney General of Ghana, Argentina’s emissaries proposed that the judicial order which impedes the continuation of the teaching trip exceeds even the reach of U.S. Judge Thomas Griesa by disowning sovereign immunity of a war ship and creates a problem between the two states.  The government of Ghana acknowledges that Argentina is right on this point, and thus said so in a friend-of-the-court filing, which the lower court judge didn’t heed.  The officials admit also that Ghana gave its consent for the Frigate’s stop, which makes what happened an embarrassment for the African country.  But they claim it is not a problem between Ghana and Argentina but between Argentina and the plaintiff and they hide behind the division of powers and the independence of the judicial branch, for which they advise filing the appeal before the court of three judges, upon which they promise to exercise all possible pressure within the law.  This was they could obtain an expeditious pronouncement, in consideration of the special characteristics of the case.  The Attorney General himself would represent Ghana’s support for Argentina’s position before that court.  The Foreign Minister is an ex-judge that has an optimistic view about this process.  It is not clear how this anticipated sequence of events affect the announcement last night in which the Foreign Minister blamed the government of Ghana for “an illegal act in violation of international law.”  Also the vulture funds from Italy for seeking attorneys to be able to get another attachment on the ship detained in the port.  The representative in charge of the effort is called Michelle Colella, a last name with very strong resonance in Argentina.  Until today, Zuain and Forti have not been received by President John Dramani Mahama, who took office in July when his predecessor, John Evans Atta Mills, died of cancer.  The influential English investment funds celebrated that the presidential transition to his vice president took place without scares or changes to economic policies.  By intercession of Cuban and Brazilian diplomats, Zuain and Forti had access to an old presidential adviser with a legendary past from during the wars of independence, together with Patrice Lumumba in the Congo and Agostinho Neto in Angola. In the meeting he showed his willingness to avoid the conflict with Argentina getting worse, which wouldn’t help President Mahama in his campaign for a new four-year term in the elections to be held in December.  Apart from the underlying solution, they asked him to intercede to set aside the worst threat – the prohibition on refueling the ship.  The adviser promised to transmit the issue to the president and give a response tonight, but before that yesterday’s announcement came, which changes the frame of the situation.

 

East of Eden

 

The moderate optimism that came from that contact contrasted with the fears over the close relations between Ghana and the United Kingdom, with which it is united under the Commonwealth of Nations whose titular head is British Queen Elizabeth II.  Worse still, Ghana is third on the list of ultra-secret tax havens to conduct illegal transactions, according to the ranking put out by the coalition of investigators and activists called The Tax Justice Network Africa. That haven is also British handiwork.  According to the London daily, “The Guardian”, Barclays bank worked since 2005 on the close relationship with the government of Accra to establish an international financial services center that would offer “low taxes and minimal transparency”.  The following year, Barclays also moved into Argentina, where it advised the province of Buenos Aires on debt placement and, in 2010, led the group of banks that conducted the second swap of Argentine bonds in default.  The laws of Ghana were modified to allow Barclays to operate as an offshore bank.  International aid and development organizations cited by the newspaper expressed fear that “the cocaine barons, who are increasingly using West Africa as a transit route into Europe, could launder drug money in Ghana.”  The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned Ghana that its emergence as a new tax haven could stimulate corruption and criminality in the whole region.  As a consequence of these concerns, last year the government canceled the authority granted to Barclays.  And two months ago, Barclays closed its office in Buenos Aires.

 

 

La Nacion

Negotiations fail and an evacuation is ordered for the crew of the Libertad

 

Sunday, October 21, 2012

 

By Marcelo Veneranda

 

The President ordered the immediate evacuation of the Frigate Libertad, detained for the last 20 days in Ghana over a claim filed by holders of bonds in default from Argentina.  The measure was announced yesterday by Foreign Minister Hector Timerman who made the accusation that the 326 crew members on the ship were at risk for “lack of guarantees.” 

 

Through a statement he read at the Casa Rosada together with Defense Minister Arturo Puricelli, Timerman said that tomorrow he will lead a mission to the UN Security Council to denounce the violation of the human rights of the crew members and international treaties and the commission of financial crimes.

 

The decision implies the failure of the negotiations initiated last Monday by a diplomatic delegation sent to the African country’s capital, Accra, to release the ship being held in the port of Tema.

 

The statement includes strong criticism for the African country and the judge that agreed to the request of the bondholders.  And it reiterates the accusation of a conspiracy between “the vulture funds” and “their Argentine partners” to extort the country.

 

"The President has decided to evacuate immediately the entire crew of Argentines and non-Argentines with the end of preserving their integrity and dignity and leaving on board only the Captain and a minimal crew necessary for attending to the Frigate while it remains detains in the port,” Timerman said yesterday.

 

Argentina holds the Ghanaian government responsible for every one of the damages suffered by the Frigate Libertad until its release and all of the harm occasioned by an illegal act which violates international norms,” the foreign minister concluded.

 

The crew of the teaching vessel from the Navy, which on June 2 started its 43rd instructional world voyage, is made up of 289 Argentine sailors, plus 23 graduates from Uruguay and Chile and 13 guests from Brazil, Paraguay, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and South Africa.

 

Sources from the Navy estimated that to preserve the Frigate and put it in movement would require that a crew of 50 would need to remain in Ghana.  Despite recognizing that the evacuation was one of the theories in play, they let it be known that the decision announced yesterday had taken them by surprise.  They didn’t rule out the possibility that the governments of Chile and Uruguay could have been pressuring the Casa Rosada to decide to evacuate.  On the contrary, they explained, those countries were seeing themselves as being forced to withdraw their delegations, a “snub” that was to be avoided.

 

Timerman yesterday complained that the risk for the crew can from the prohibition from the Ghanaian judge on providing fuel to the Frigate, which would impede the functioning of the energy generators that supply the electrical power, the water, refrigeration of food and the functioning of the bathrooms.  He added that “the most serious” part was that it would leave the fire-fighting systems inoperable, the bilge pumps – for which the ship would sink – and the  fault sensors.

 

According to the foreign minister, the judge conditioned any solution on an agreement with the bondholders.  “It was clear that the intention of the judge was to oblige a sovereign country to negotiate with an entity dedicated to financial piracy from its fiscal lair in the Caribbean,” he said, pointing towards an alleged international conspiracy: “Neither the judge, nor the vulture funds, nor their Argentine partners will manage to twist the decision of a people and its government to reject the extortions that they want to submit us to.” 

 

The scandal of the Frigate Libertad set off a crude internal fight between the Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry, with accusations crossing about the confusion that brought the ship into a port without guarantees before the demands from the bondholders. 

 

The conflict caused the resignation of Navy chief Admiral Carlos Alberto Paz, the relieving of two naval officials of their responsibilities, and the exit of the chief of Strategic Military Intelligence at Defense, María Lourdes Puente Olivera, a close confidante of Puricelli’s.

 

An October in turbulent waters

The Frigate Libertad crisis as it happened: 

 

    TUESDAY 2

    Frigate detained 

    Ghana judiciary sides with the request of vulture funds to detain the Frigate Libertad, with a crew of 289 Argentine sailors and 37 foreigners.

 

    THURSDAY 11

    Decision and political mission

    A judge confirms the decision and fixed a bail of US$20 million.  Argentina sent to Ghana the Vice Foreign Minister, Eduardo Zuain, and the Defense Vice Minister , Alfredo Forti.

 

    SATURDAY 13

    Internal fight explodes

    Anger is revealed between the Foreign and Defense ministries over the sending of the Frigate.  Rear Admiral Luis González Day says it was an “inter-ministerial” decision.

 

    MONDAY 15

    Crisis in the Navy

    Officials González Day and Alfredo Blanco (he’d asked the Foreign Ministry to include Ghana on the itinerary) are relieved of their duty.  Navy Chief Admiral Carlos A. Paz resigns.

 

    THURSDAY  18

    Stepping down at Defense

    Puricelli pays a political cost: director of Military Intelligence, Lourdes Puente Olivera, resigns.

 

    FRIDAY  19

    International complaint 

    Without success from the political mission, Timerman announces that Argentina will go to the UN.

 

    SATURDAY  20

    Return operation

    For lack of guarantees, the President ordered the ship evacuated.

 

 

Clarin

For “lack of guarantees,” the government orders the Frigate Libertad evacuated

 

Sunday, October 21, 2012

 

By Natasha Niebieskikwiat

 

President Cristina Kirchner gave orders to “immediately” evacuate, “for lack of guarantees”, the crew of the Frigate Libertad to “preserve its integrity and dignity,” reported a statement read by Foreign Minister Hector Timerman in the Casa Rosada.  Only remaining on board will be the captain of the ship, Lucio Salonio, and a minimal crew to attend to the boat. 

 

The statement said that Timerman would travel to the UN to meet tomorrow with the president of the Security Council and will bring the complaint to “all those commissions that deal with human rights, international treaties and financial crimes.”

 

The decision by the government shows the serious situation the country finds itself in to recover the emblematic teaching vessel of the national Navy through legal channels.

 

Clarín reported at the beginning of this conflict that due to the strength of Ghanaian justice, evacuation plans for the ship were already being studied.

 

The text read by Timerman argues that the decision from the Ghana court “has placed at risk the human rights of 326 crew member” of the Frigate, “among them citizens of Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and South Africa.” 

 

According to what Clarin learned, the official mission sent to Ghana extended its stay and remained in Accra yesterday with instructions to persist in the political negotiation to achieve the release of the Frigate held at the Port of Tema by local judicial order that sided with a request for attachment from the investment fund, NML, from the U.S.

 

The mission in Ghana is made up of Vice Foreign Minister Eduardo Zuain and Defense Secretary for International Affairs Alfredo Forti.  Both had meetings in the Ghanaian foreign ministry and briefly visited the ship, which generated great unease for the ship’s crew.  They were also seeking to meet with the judge who ruled in favor of the vulture fund, Richard Adjei Frimpong.

 

Yesterday’s statement argues that from the Argentine request that contemplated the possibility of a humanitarian “tragedy” on the ship, “the only response from the judge was that we arrive at an agreement with the vulture fund.”

 

As Clarin reported, the Ghanaian government had a pronouncement that was favorable to Argentina between the detention of the ship and the judicial ruling from last Thursday.  Judge Frimpong of the Superior Commercial Court didn’t side with that request, and the ship has been 19 days as of today detained with its whole crew on board.

 

The statement from the Foreign Ministry issued last night said that Argentina held the Ghanaian government responsible for “all and every one of the damages that the Frigate Libertad suffers until its release and all of the harm occasioned by an illegal act which violates international law.”  The government acknowledged that for the judge to prohibit fuel for the Frigate that also harms “the functioning of the energy generators” that supply the kitchen, the refrigerators that preserve food, the bathrooms, showers, running water and electrical light.  “Even more serious,” the statement said, “is that the lack of supply of fuel would leave the fire-fighting system inoperable, as well as the bilge pumps if the ship sinks, and would impede the fault sensors.”

 

 

Perfil

Strong criticism for the President over the crisis

 

Sunday, October 21, 2012

 

By Rosario Ayerdi

 

For the Argentine sailors who find themselves in Ghana, Facebook as turned into the channel of communication with their families.  Through this social network they upload pictures, leave messages and chat with them.

 

Many of them also take advantage of their walls to refer humorously to the conflict that has kept them in the African country since October 2.  On their walls they are already circulating posters and photos which launch criticism of the President.  “Swap the president for the frigate.  Direct change from Buenos Aires to Ghana.  Freight at our expense,” is one of the images that various sailors are sharing. 

 

“If I don’t pay AFIP: they attach me.  If I don’t pay ARBA: they attach me.  CFK: what did you expect they’d do if you don’t pay the foreign debt?” says the poster that is on the majority of the profiles of the young people.

 

“And after our leaders speak of liberty, if the biggest emblem of liberty is our glorious frigate, we’re already losing,” are the comments that the families of some of the 325 crew members on the teaching vessel are leaving.

 

Before the national government officials arrived to undo the conflict, the sailors waited anxiously for the results.  “Now to rest, tomorrow is a key day for our country,” they wrote on their pages.  However, the agents didn’t get good news and continue waiting there.

 

 

Clarin

Anguish of the families in a letter to Cristina

 

Sunday, October 21, 2012

 

Before the decision from the government to evacuate the ship was known, the families of the Argentine sailors that make up the crew of the Frigate Libertad published a strong public letter to President Cristina Kirchner on Facebook in which they displayed the “anguish” and “bitterness” over the “uncertainty” that they say they are going through with the situation.

 

“We feel great disillusion when we see that it is was more important to declare an ambassador of popular culture –without taking away the merit of that – than the 320 families who are going through this,” said the text in reference to the recent naming of Isabel Sarli.

 

“On Friday, the Foreign Minister spoke but then made a special announcement after 20 days since the problem started – why let so much time pass?  The message was “we will not negotiate with vulture fund.  But the big question is: so what?”

 

The letter even went to demand that a bail be paid “so they can sail” and then right after “make the necessary complaints.”

 

The text, which the families decided not to sign individually to avoid retaliation from the authorities against the sailors, has very strong passages.  “Did you know that not all of the crew members have the same chance to communicate with their families because economically it’s very expensive as each message or phone call is charged in dollars?”

 

 

Clarin

“Give us Messi and take the Frigate back home”

 

Sunday, October 21, 2012

 

By Ana Baron

 

(WASHINGTON) “Don’t mess with the ‘Argies’. If there is a War with Argentina, Ghana wouldn’t last even a minute.  The government of Argentina has already sent a very strong signal to the government of Ghana that they release the war ship.  Who knows what could happen next,” wrote Kofi, a Ghanaian worried about the retention of the Frigate Libertad in the Port of Tema. 

 

In the comments from readers published on the site of Ghananews, some Ghanaian like Kofi fear that the diplomatic tension generated by the Argentine insignia ship would descend into a war between Ghana and Argentina.

 

For having been an English colony without a doubt they recall the war of the Malvinas when the British called the Argentines “Argies”.

 

Other Ghanaians didn’t take it so seriously.  They say that the problem should be solved with a football match.

 

“Invite Maradona and the problem is solved,” says one of them.  “Give us Messi and take the Frigate back home.”

 

There were also those who criticized the Ghana court.

 

They accuse the judge of having collected bribes from the vulture funds and asked that in the presidential elections of December the Ghanaians vote against President John Dramani Mahama.

 

While it’s always difficult to know who are the authors of the comments on the internet or of what nationality they are when they take up an international conflict, the ones that refer to the Frigate Libertad reflect very diverse reactions.

 

“They are going to attack us at any minute.  This is the last thing Ghana needs: a war between Ghana and Argentina,” says another reader identified as “the rocks of Ghana”.

 

Emma says for her part that “For generations, a country captures the naval ship of another country only if there is a War between the two countries.  This shows the kind of knowledge the government and the judges have about war.  We have to be very careful because a war ship is dangerous and can cause us a lot of problems.”  The Ghanaian election campaign is summed up through ZZZ, a reader that thinks “Ghana is playing with fire.”  “First it was Ivory Coast, and now Argentina.  Vote against this useless and corrupt government before it turns Ghana into another country destroyed by war,” he writes.

 

“Stop saying silly things”, Amewuga answered.  “The commercial court of Ghana that ordered the retention of the Frigate cannot be instructed by the government.  The courts of Ghana are free.  Don’t blame the government.  Idiot!”

 

Not all of them think however that the courts of Ghana are so independent.  “The judges die for a bribe.  The vulture funds have tried to detain the ship in many countries without success because the government and the courts don’t accept bribes.  Only in Ghana have they had success,” says Solala.

 

“Who is this stupid judge that aligns with the pig investors of the vulture funds?  These people have no conscience.  In fact, they have a moral deficit and it doesn’t matter to them who they hurt in order to get money.  I can imagine that the judge is ignoring the activities of these bastards,” agrees another reader explaining that while western countries forgave Liberia’s debt after the war, the vulture funds bought the debt of companies that they knew they couldn’t collect on.  “That stupid judge ... they have to remove him,” he complains.  “He or she is a cause of shame for Ghana.”

 

“Ghana 1, Argentina 0” is the headline of another comment from readers that believe that the solution can be found in football.

 

“We play a football match and we deactivate this the fastest way possible,” says one.  “Invite Maradona as a trainer of the Black Stars or anyone else from the national teams, for a month and the problem is resolved.   They are our brothers together with Brazil” says another.

 

 

La Nacion

They are also waiting for 7-D in Ghana

 

Sunday, October 21, 2012

 

ACCRA (Special report).- In Ghana the countdown has also started toward 7-D: the 7th of December, in effect, is when they hold the crucial national elections.

 

More than the stranded Argentine ship – news that was in the local news outlets only when the ruling came which determined its detention, but which now has disappeared – are the elections that are becoming a big reason for discussion at this time in Ghana.

 

"For people on the street, the issue of the Frigate is not an issue for conversation; it is for international observers and diplomats,” explained Martin Agyemang, a Ghanaian graduate of the London School of Economics to LA NACION.

 

It’s not for anything this capital of more than 4 million inhabitants find themselves covered in posters and banners from the main contenders in these elections: on one side, the current president, John Mahama, of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), a social democratic party, whose symbol is an umbrella, and the other, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), more oriented towards capitalism, whose symbol is the elephant.  Mahama became president on July 24 after the death of his successor, John Evans Attah Mills, with whom he served as vice president.

 

There is great uncertainty over the Ghanaian 7-D, which, according to local analysts, will not bring a definitive result.  There are eight contenders and they are sure no one will be able to get 50% of the votes necessary to win in the first round.

 

Could the Frigate conflict influence the campaign?  “While until now the opposition hasn’t talked about this issue, later on it could come to have influence,” said Agyemang.

 

 

La Nacion

The Argentine bondholders also ask for a response

 

Saturday, October 20, 2012

 

During the detention of the Frigate Libertad in Ghana, Argentine holders of bonds in default demanded that the government of Cristina Kirchner pay those debts immediately. 

 

Through a statement, the Association of the Victims of the Pesification and the Default (ADAPD) argued that, on the basis of the principle of legal continuity of the state, debts with creditors are from the country and not the government that contracted them.  For that reason, it remarked on the “need” to face “a situation that involved being outside of the world for not wanting to settle a debt that represents no more in capital than 1.5% of GDP.”

 

In a statement that recognizes the attributions of the New York courts, before which the vulture funds are suing, the association added: “There are more than 100 cases that have been won by different groups of creditors in conditions of being able to attach the country’s assets, and the immense majority have been won by genuine savers, many of them Argentines, who bought those bonds before the default and who didn’t enter the swaps because they found them to be thoughtless and arbitrary.”

 

 

Clarin

The government will now turn to the UN to free the Frigate

 

Saturday, October 20, 2012

 

By Guido Braslavsky

 

Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman yesterday demanded that the government of Ghana “assume its responsibility” over the “illegal” detention of the Frigate Libertad and warned it was necessary for the government to go before the United Nations to demand the release of the teaching vessel.

 

In a statement that he read to the press in the Casa Rosada, Timerman said that there would be no negotiation with the vulture funds and that the Foreign Ministry would “exhaust all recourses” before the Ghana courts.

 

This statement from the foreign minister was the first official statement in several days about the issue of the Frigate that is being held in the Ghanaian port of Tema since October 2 by the request of the vulture fund NML Capital Limited. The statements from Timerman were relevant also by what they allowed to be inferred: that the government-to-government diplomatic negotiations initiated on Monday in Accra – the Ghanaian capital – failed and brought no positive results.

 

A bit of news was the pressure that was being sought to be exercised on the government of Ghana.  Timerman reiterated that the Frigate as a war ship enjoys immunities that the African country recognizes in various international conventions.  “The action of the Ghanaian judge violates international law, compromises Ghana’s international responsibility and sets a precedent that weakens the rights of all countries whose military ships navigate with the conviction and security that countries will respect their immunities,” he argued.

 

Clarín managed to ask about the status of the mission sent to Accra, made up of Vice Foreign Minister Eduardo Zuain and International Affairs Secretary of the Defense Ministry, Alfredo Forti.  “It continues negotiating with the Ghanaian government,” Timerman argued before leaving the conference room.  The concern over the status of the 300 crew members was not responded to.

 

From Ghana, the testimony of a marine radio Vorterix was the exception within the informational circle the government drew around the Frigate.

 

“Here the work environment is normal, as if we were in Buenos Aires; there is a good atmosphere and we are waiting for this to be solved.  We’re well,” said Corporal Adrián Gómez Arias. When he was asked about a plan to escape that was aborted, he said that “that kind of information we never handle.”

 

Saying that negotiating with the vulture funds “is not and will not be one of the options,” Timerman dismissed the tacit manner that NML Capital offered to pay the costs of repatriation of the members of the crew.  The attorney that represents the speculative fund in Ghana, Ace Anan Ankomah, confirmed to AFP news agency the previous report by Clarin about the existence of that proposal.  “They made that offer, but we didn’t receive a reply from the other party and I was not present at any agreement for negotiation,” said Ankomah.

 

Timerman, recently arriving from New York, insisted that “neither the President nor the Argentine people will accept negotiating national sovereignty attacked by an economic power that operates from fiscal lairs.”  He said that the filing of the vulture fund was made in Great Britain where it was not against Argentine assets that count on immunity there because, as in other European countries or the U.S., those attempts have failed.

 

 

La Nacion

The government warns Ghana it will go to the UN

 

Saturday, October 20, 2012

 

By Mariano Obarrio

 

The government of Cristina Kirchner yesterday took another step in pressuring Ghana.  Foreign Minister Hector Timerman announced that “it confirmed” to that country that it “will continue demanding that it assume its responsibility in the retention of the Frigate Libertad.”  He warned that “it’s an illegal act” that despite being a legal decision it would compromise that State, because it violates immunities that same country subscribed to in two international conventions.

 

He also reiterated that he will not negotiate with the vulture funds that demand payment of the debt in default and said that Argentina could take action against Ghana before the United Nations (UN).

 

The President sought, thus, to put in the negotiation a “maximum level of pressure on Ghana” to get the court of that country to undo the detention of the Argentine war ship, according to what sources at the Casa Rosada and the Foreign Ministry said to LA NACION.

 

Argentine diplomats recognized yesterday that the greatest difficulty exists in that the Ghana administration argues that the judiciary of that country is independent.  However, the Foreign Ministry is certain that there could be mechanisms of internal resolution in that country to undo the conflict, but didn’t say what.  They are also betting heavily on the support from Chile and Brazil in the negotiation. 

 

Timerman formalized this turning of the screw in the pressure after a meeting with the President in Olivos.  After her he was sent to the Casa Rosada to read an official statement entitled: “Argentina will continue demanding the honoring of international law.”

 

To overcome the obstacle of the division of powers in Ghana, Timerman said that “the Ghanaian state is responsible in the international arena to act for all the branches of the State, including its judicial branch.”

 

"The action of the Ghanaian judge violates international law, compromises Ghana’s international responsibility,” he added.

 

The new decision shows that the government didn’t achieve results yet in the negotiation.  Consulted by the press about the possible return of the Argentine envoys, Vice Foreign Minister Eduardo Zuain, and Vice Minister of Defense Alfredo Forti, Timerman only said: “Negotiations continue with the government of Ghana.”

 

"The Argentine Republic has confirmed to the government of the Republic of Ghana that it will continue demanding that it assume its responsibility in the detention of the Frigate Libertad,” said the statement.

 

"Said measure is an illegal act as the war ship enjoys immunities that the Republic of Ghana itself recognizes in various international conventions which it is a signatory to among them being the UN Convention ont he law of the sea and the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules Relative to the Immunity of Ships that are property of the State,” he said.

 

Timerman concluded that Argentina “is keeping all options open in the international legal arena and, if necessary, will go before the United Nations.”

 

 

La Nacion

What to do to free Libertad

 

Saturday, October 20, 2012

 

By Abel Posse

 

Argentina, a country always accused of administrative incompetence, issued bonds for its loans, seeking to place them at the dangerous cost of prolonging jurisdiction, this is the possibility that the holder could demand in the courts of “serious countries” and, more seriously, with the renouncing of the right of sovereign immunity applicable to Argentine assets abroad.

 

The conduct of a desperate country.  But effective conduct for obtaining money cloaked in the legal solvency of others and without much conscience of sovereignty as a superior value of the Nation.

 

As things go many holders of the bonds, above all the retirees in Italy, France, Germany, Japan and other countries ceded their bonds to specialized international companies.

 

These companies file before courts of the United States, for example, delegations by Argentina in its renunciation of jurisdiction, to solicit the kidnapping of our naval insignia, the Frigate Libertad, in the port of Tema, in Ghana. 

 

The American court accedes and asks the Ghana court to comply with the kidnapping of the ship.  The Ghana Court accepts as good will executor of the legal community and precedes as we know.

 

All of this is legal and the father of the vultures is none other than the pandemic Argentine idiocy.

 

If paying the bail requested by the plaintiff had been accepted or the humiliation of “repatriating on their nickel” our sailors, we would enter into a tunnel of interminable helplessness and the plaintiffs “would go all the way” as well – why not?  (The President acknowledged the facts without recalling that the government of Nestor Kirchner in 2004 also made a similar error.  Not only the previous governments...)

 

The trap that we find ourselves in is almost insolvable on the legal plane, but the path to a solution, despite our discredit in the international arena,  comes from public international law.

 

We see: the Frigate Libertad entered Ghana on a mission of international friendship, as an insignia ship, with war banners and an Argentine captain.  Previous exchange of notes and the acceptance of the Executive Branch, the presidency and the receiving country.

 

The ship entered the port accepted by the government of Ghana and being a military ship, it has the immunities of the Vienna convention (which Ghana ratified in 1962 and Argentina in 1963).  Immunity for the ship and for the crew that is similar to that of diplomats.

 

Called to do so by the American court, the Court of Ghana legally accepted the case based on the two sins of our irresponsibility: the validity of the renunciation of Argentina’s jurisdiction and the renunciation of sovereign immunity.

 

The Supreme Court and the intervening judges of Ghana are proceeding according to justice.  But they are not the highest authority for deciding the detention and the sequestering of the ship. 

 

Above the judicial sphere there is the sovereign power of Ghana as a state: it accepted the friendly visit of the war ship from Argentina and admitted it into its port and that constitutes a guarantee of its immunity.  Both states proceed in good faith and Ghana was not the agent of what would be an unworthy ambush.

 

So the situation is that the Executive Branch is the one which exercises the supreme sovereignty of Ghana.  It cannot execute in this case what was decided as an interlocutory measure by the American court.  They proceeded well both the American court as well as the Ghanaian court.

 

But the decision and the sovereign obligation corresponds exclusively to the Executive Branch which can and should order the release of the ship, without contradicting the function of the constitutional powers with this.

 

I believe that this is the strongest point for the defense of this particularly sophisticated case that we’ve achieved in our long self-destructive improvisation.

 

 

Clarin

The Sycophant who became foreign minister

 

Friday, October 19, 2012

 

By Jorge Lanata

 

He had a celebrated father, a millionaire mother and receives orders from a dominant President.

 

“He’s a natural sycophant,” his friends say privately.  As Capote wrote, citing Saint Theresa, “more tears are shed for answered prayers than for unanswered ones.”  He is where he always wanted to be: the Foreign Minister.  But the son of Jacobo Timerman, the husband of Anabel Sielecki, the “come here, Hector, take my picture” of Cristina Kirchner, feels his world shaking:  the Frigate Libertad has already been anchored in the port of Tema, in Ghana, for 18 days.  And there are already US$882,000 in expenses, a frustrated attempt by the crew to escape and a long series of resignations that don’t seem to end.

 

While it was decided to blame the Navy and cut the ones at the bottom loose, the whirlpool still spins between the Foreign and Defense ministers.  Note 59/2012 signed by Ambassador Eduardo Zuain, secretary of foreign affairs, warns that during the trip there could not be a guarantee that the Frigate “couldn’t be subject to possible claims, preliminary measures or execution,” saying that the biggest risks could come in European ports (Spain and Portugal).  And a separate paragraph pronounces the “famous last words”  “In regard to the rest of the countries on the itinerary there is no knowledge of judicial claims existing against Argentina.”  

 

The year 2012 was not a good year for the Foreign Minister: he had to move the wedding of his daughter in José Ignacio, worsened relations with the Jewish community over the dialogue with Iran, and Africa ended the dream.  First a shameful tour all the way to Angola that nothing came of and now Ghana.

 

“When we know the place and date we’ll let you know so you can make your travel plans and join us!” said the email sent by Jordana Timerman announcing her wedding to Martin Levinton, scheduled for March 2013. 

 

But it will not be in La Huella, the resort of Martin Pittaluga in José Ignacio: the idea was scratched by the currency trap.  Nobody could imagine the invitees filling out the AFIP form and taking out 10 dollars a day to participate in the festivities.  For the foreign minister, at some point, it was liberating.  Weeks ago he confessed to a friend his worst fear for the summer of 2013: that they would boo him at La Huella.

 

Jordana is Amanda’s twin sister and has worked since 2010 as an adviser in the undersecretariat of Institutional Reform and Strengthening of Democracy.  She came into public administration authorized by Anibal Fernandez, is an American citizen and doesn’t comply with the requirement of nationality (native Argentine, by option or naturalization) to hold public employment.  Amanda is an employee of Lacoste.  Anabel Sielecki, her mother, is a descendent of the family that founded Laboratorios Phoenix, the first importers of penicillin and the polio vaccine.

 

Anabel is a shareholder in Petroquímica Cuyo, the AREC construction firm of South Water (a water distributor in various provinces) and Parke Davis, Elea and Dexter laboratories and has a weakness for production of wine: she owns half of Baealieu, a wine cellar that makes Mendel wine (Manuel, in Yiddish, in honor of her father).  It’s clear that Timmerman Junior’s problems are not money.

 

“Do you know how to make a small fortune in Argentina?  Start with a big fortune,” goes the Jewish joke about the sons that erode the fortunes of their fathers.

 

They say that Junior is a good teller of Jewish jokes, and there is one that has him as the protagonist: it happens at La Comercial, the mythical bar in Gotlieb right in Once, Corrientes between Uriburu and Junin, host of debates of the “schul”.  In the Comercial there was a table for every group.  There were the communists, those that sell diamonds, the Zionists, those that lent out dough, all of them.  One day Hector walks in and asks Gotlieb to cash a check.  Gotlieb took him by the arm, amiably, and accompanied him to the door.  He showed him to the Banco Mercantil, which was out front, and said: “I have a deal with Werthein.  He doesn’t sell herring and I don’t cash checks.”

 

Relations between Timerman and the Sieleckis was torturous: they boycotted the wedding as much as possible and in recent years they distanced themselves from politics: Hector is in the middle of “Clarin Lies”, his mother in law has tea with  Ernestina Herrera de Noble .

 

But the man that answered me in Angola that President for Life Santos didn’t seem like a dictatorship is used to living with contradictions: from March to August in 1976 he led the newspaper La Tarde, one of the journalistic swords of the dictatorship that is recalled today with certain shame.  “My incidence was low,” he said to Perfil in 2007, while he was news director.  “I always question those months of my life.  I didn’t almost ever go to the news room.”

 

Timerman suffered, according to Kundera, the unbearable lightness of being Foreign Minister: he’s always there but never quite there.  He landed in diplomacy making a gala of his contacts with the Jewish lobby in New York, that never were so great and today they’ve turned their back on his approach to Iran, was denounced by Ocaña and Garrido for delaying the information request from Switzerland on Moyano and had to defense the suitcase of Antonini Wilson, comparing him with Gordo Valor (a mob figure in Argentina). 

 

Now he balances himself out by praying that the one to be sunk by the Frigate is Puricelli.  After all, the conflict was Africa.  And since when has the Foreign Ministry had something to do with what goes on abroad?

 

Investigation: JL/María Eugenia Duffard/Amelia Cole

 

 

Clarin

Money Laundering: there was praise, but Argentina remains on the gray list

 

Friday, October 19, 2012

 

By Natasha Niebieskikwait

 

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) yesterday closed its plenary in Paris with praise for Argentina in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing, however still did not take it off the list of countries that must submit to more intensive examination than others for its deficiencies in honoring the Task Force’s mandates.

 

“The FATF is satisfied with Argentina’s continued progress and the substantial measures adopted in addressing the deficiencies identified in the previous mutual evaluations.  In particular, the practical application of the presidential decree on freezing assets related to terrorism,” argues the statement uploaded yesterday onto the FATF’s website.

 

A story from Telam which cited the head of the Financial Information Unit (UIF), José Sbatella, said that the country would not have to submit its accounts to the group every four months – but every eight – like it has since it was put on the list together with countries like Afghanistan, for its non-compliance.  And it said that the country will participate in a regular manner in the meeting scheduled for February and then will have to go back to doing so in June 2013.  However, from what Clarin found out from very high sources, despite the praise, Argentina remains on the list, with intensive review in course with an uncertain outlook.  “Argentina has already done everything it had to do and we don’t know why the FATF is not deciding to take us off the gray list,” said the source.

 

At the start of the week, Justice Minister Julio Alak met with business leaders from the so-called Group of 6, to speak to them about the plenary that ended yesterday in Paris, where the government expected to leave the gray list.

 

Sbatella said that they’d accepted the plan of action on money laundering and terrorism, and that “therefore” now came “the application of the law.”  The official alluded to the scandal over the detention of the Frigate Libertad.  He said that to be a full member of FATF allowed Argentina to “demand of other countries what they demanded of us before.”  And he named Ghana, “which is on the black list of FATF for being a tax haven.”

 

 

Veintitres

“High flying operation”

 

by Adrián Murano and Andrea Recúpero

 

Thursday, October 18, 2012

 

The detention of the Frigate Libertad in Ghana took the lid off a complex plot that involves magnates, lawyers, the media, military chiefs and local politicians.  The plan to wear down the government and the interests in play.  

 

Politics and business on a grand scale are fertile territory for a conspiracy.  Of course not all conspiracies are the same.  They are subtle and brutal, ordinary or sophisticated, domestic or global.  And they are distinguished, also, by their origin: they can spring from a determined engine or be concocted from a sum of the facts – apparently – isolated and coincidental.  Those are the most effective ones.  The best conspirators operate above circumstances.

 

That was what happened with the detention of the Frigate Libertad, the teaching vessel of the Argentine Navy that since two weeks ago has been detained in a port of Ghana by court ruling.  An episode that, as in the best fiction of the genre, revealed a plot that brings together unscrupulous financiers with military chiefs, influential attorneys, ambitious politicians and media operators.

 

On October 1, when the frigate came into the port of Tema, few knew what was going to happen.  But the information is in who did know.  Who?  In principle, the attorneys of the vulture funds that were waiting for the ship with a request for attachment that was rapidly processed – successfully – by the local judiciary.  But the list doesn’t end with the rapacious bondholders and their African lawyers.  With the passing of the hours, the suspects plowed across the Atlantic and poised over the Edificio Libertad.

 

On Sunday the 14th, journalist Horacio Verbitsky revealed that it was the Navy that asked to include Ghana on the frigate’s itinerary.  The request had the signature of Commodore Alfredo Blanco, ex-director of Naval Organization and Doctrine.  Based on non-specific “operative reasons”, the official asked to replace Nigeria – included among the 16 destinations on the original schedule – with the Ghanaian port.  Three days later, the Defense Ministry raised the proposal with the Foreign Ministry, which had to evaluate the viability of the destination.  That mechanism of inter-ministerial control, which in the past was routine, again became crucial five years ago precisely because of the stalking of the vulture funds.  On May 23, the secretary of Foreign Relations from the Foreign Ministry, Eduardo Zuaín, warned that, due to the open judicial alerts against Argentina “in different foreign jurisdictions, cannot guarantee that its teaching trip could not be subject to possible complaints, preliminary measures or execution during its stay in foreign ports.”  As the itinerary included Spain and Portugal, the official recalled the existence of open complaints in courts of Germany, Belgium, Italy and France which could turn into attachments according to European Union rules on jurisdiction, recognition and execution of judicial resolutions in civil and mercantile courts.  “Regarding the rest of the countries on the itinerary,” Zuain said, “there is no knowledge that judicial complaints exist against Argentina that could allow for solicitation of preliminary measures or executions against the Frigate Libertad.  Regardless of this, it should be borne in mind the intense activity of the hold outs that are attempting legal actions and attachments against assets of the Argentine Republic in various countries on the basis of bonds in which our country has renounced immunities of jurisdiction and execution.  Added to that is the sumbolic value of the Frigate Libertad, which would ensure ample media repercussions around any alleged measure,” the official predicted.  He was right.

 

The display of the opposition media was by the book.  Clarin and its lesser partners, like La Nacion, accused the government of unpredictability, speculated about the alleged internal wars between ministries and even decided that the oft-accused Guillermo Moreno ordered the docking in Tema.  On this, of course, they presented no evidence, different from what happened with Commodore Blanco and his duly completed letter.  However, the flagrant guilty part of the Navy in the operation was neatly disguised in the opposition newspapers even after the government decided to relieve the official and his superior, the secretary of the force, Luis María González Day. In that case, the explanation they offered to their suffering readers was that the government used the Navy as a “scapegoat”.

 

Launched in an all-or-nothing war against the government, the media of the Clarin Group are natural allies of anyone who wants to harm the K leadership.  Nothing suggests that the Ghanaian conspiracy was hatched in the offices on Calle Piedras, which doesn’t detract from the contribution that the multimedias are making for the protagonists of this international intrigue.  One of them consists of running from the scene to the vulture funds, voracious financiers that are arguing a long – and onerous – campaign against the country.  

 

The funds that are acting against Argentina are around 47.  They are speculative consortiums that bought debt bonds from countries in trouble when they are below their nominal value.  They did that with bonds issued by Argentina in the 1990s, which then were declared in default.  The swaps of 2005 and 2010 obtained an acceptance of 92 percent and the vulture funds fell outside with the remaining 8 percent.  According to the Argentine ambassador in Washington, Jorge Arguello, “in the desire to impose through force the payment of their bonds they refused the swap, despite the fact they would have made money on the operation.  For that, now, they are bringing forward a campaign before the U.S. administration to defame the country.”  The diplomat emphasized that they have spent US$3 million in that defamation campaign.  For example, organizing a seminar in Washington to debate if Argentina should remain in the G-20 or coordinating meetings about the status of freedom of the press in the country.  One detail: to feed that debate they served up a paper written by Jorge Rendo, director and lobbyist for Clarin Group.

 

Among the most famous is NML Capital, controlled by Paul Singer, founder of American Task Force Argentina, an entity that in recent months lead an open attack in the United States against Arguello himself.  Also well- known is EM Ltd., whose owner is Kenneth Dart, a magnate producer of plastic cups.  These groups were the ones that in 2010 tried to capture Central Bank reserves.  A key moment, with direct consequences on the Argentine economic area, which culminated in the exit of Martin Redrado from the Central Bank.

 

At that time, the funds were seeking to attach the reserves from the United States, but the complaints didn’t succeed due to the BCRA’s autarky.  Until a crack opened: the creation of the Bicentennial Fund, set up by President Cristina Fernandez, which allowed the payment of debt maturities with reserves from the Central Bank, set off a crisis with the ex-president of that financial entity which favored the vultures.  

 

Redrado, with the argument that the measure hit against the Bank’s autonomy, refused to transfer the reserves that the Executive asked for.  In that framework, the funds took advantage of the wedge that Redrado introduced to intervene in the market seeking a drop in the price of bonds and tried to reinforce their position before the imminent debt swap.  Redrado’s rebellion, first to surrender the reserves and then to resign his post, was taken advantage of by the scavengers that moved to sell and they got the most significant bonds to lose up to 10% of their value.  In the midst of the internal row, the judge from New York, Thomas Griesa, put an attachment on accounts of the Central Bank in the United States based on the theory of “alter ego”.  At high economic and political cost, the government managed to deactivate that operation.

 

Two years after that crisis, NML returned to the news through the attachment request on the Frigate Libertad.  But not only for this: on July 18, while the ship was sailing to Tema, a local intermediary sent a “settlement” proposal to the national government.  The letter carries the signature of the vice president of the fund, Jay Newman, and was delivered to the secretary general of the presidency, Oscar Parrilli.  Who carried the mail was Mariano Mera Figueroa. An attorney at a modest law firm, son of an ex-minister of Carlos Menem, cousin of the governor of Salta, Juan Manuel Urtubey, ex-candidate for mayor of Buenos Aires under Menemism and ex-candidate for president of River Plate, his biggest political success was to lead the Juventud Antoniana de Salta football club, a job he had to leave in the midst of a scandal over management of funds.  The vulture fund’s proposal that Mera sent the government  consisted of accepting the haircut of 40% established by law, but with a detail: adding 2 billion dollars to the operation that the fund would contribute to YPF as a “good will” gesture.  As that first letter got no response, the fund sent another on August 31, where it ratified the young lawyer as its intermediary.

 

How did this domestic second-line politician get wrapped in an intricate international web? The Mera version of the story begins at Ben Gurion University in Israel.  There, in the midst of a trip to the Holy Land, knew Singer’s son, who worked for the family fund coordinating deals in a Kibbutz.  Mera swears that he didn’t know that the young Singer was the son of the head of the fund, who just knew of the family relationship three months ago, when he was called in by the father of his friend in New York.  In the Big Apple, Papa Singer proposed he mediate a solution with the government.  “He regrets not participating in the swap and has good will to settle,” he said to Veintitrés.

 

–Why now?

 

–He acknowledges that he didn’t believe in (Nestor) Kirchner and thought that the country wasn’t viable.  Now he sees that that ones in crisis are the central countries, fundamentally the Europeans, and has the desire to solve this situation with the country.

 

–It calls attention that the proposal was simultaneous to the attachment of the frigate.

 

–I already said that Singer has nothing to do with that.  There are issues there that exceed the economic proposal that the fund makes.  They’re issues of international policy.

 

–…

 

–Look, Ghana is part of the Commonwealth, so it wouldn’t be strange that behind the issue of the frigate is hidden a retaliation from teh British government over Argentina’s position on the Malvinas.

 

–And how to do explain the Navy changing the itinerary to include Ghana?

 

–The official that did that has to be tried for treason to the country, that is my opinion.

 

Another curiosity: Mera’s thesis, where he blames Great Britain for the struggle over the frigate, agrees with information revealed by Verbitsky, the reporter that discovered the affair.  On Tuesday the 9^th, the Ghanaian captain in charge of Tema let the frigate’s captain know that they would get the evil eye if the ship decided to attempt an escape.  By that date, the destroyer HMS Edinburgh was entering the port of Tema, having sailed five days from Casablanca to hold anti-piracy and anti-drug trafficking interdiction tasks on African coasts.  Its final destination was the Malvinas, where it will replace HSM Dauntless. But before it would refuel in the port of Ghana, where it was scheduled to arrive on Thursday the 11^th.  It’s easy to imagine what would happen that if the Argentine frigate in flight had been captured by a ship built in a British shipyard.  

 

But there is no record that the multiple tentacles of Singer operate over the Royal Navy, but that doesn’t diminish his influence.  The financier is one of the main advisers to U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.  According to what many U.S. media outlets have reported, Singer would guarantee millions to the Romney campaign in exchange for future favors if he gets to the White House.  Singer’s ties with Republicans are not new.  A beneficiary of his contributions is the senator of Cuban origin, Marco Rubio, elected from Florida, who last year promoted the blocking of loans from the IADB and World Bank for Argentina.  That maneuver was in “retaliation” because Argentina “is not honoring American creditors,” read as bondholders or former shareholders of concessionary companies from the privatizations that went to the ICSID demanding indemnities.

 

Singer also created the group American Task Force Argentina to lobby against the country.  He put Robert Shapiro in front of ATFA, and gave him the job of going to the hotel where the President stayed during her last visit to New York and even to the doors of Harvard University with the vulture fund’s complaints.  The executive director of ATFA, Robert Raben, and co-chair of the lobby group, Nancy Soderberg, former ambassador at the UN and adviser to ex-Senator Edward Kennedy, are the voices that are heard most frequently against the country in defense of the rapacious funds.  In 2011, before the American Congress took up the veto of new credits for Argentina, Soderberg said that the vote was “another message to the Argentine government that the continued evasion of its responsibilities to the international community will not be tolerated.”  She’s the same woman who on October 2, in an article published in the Harvard Crimson, called for CFK to resign.

 

It was precisely at Harvard where “the law student Tomás Pérez Alati” put himself in front of the protest organized against the President.  He even said – in an accusatory tone and pointed at the so-called currency trap – that “he keeps his credit card because they won’t let him buy dollars.”  The student with a scholarship is the son of José Pérez Alati, partner of José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz Jr. and Mariano Grondona (jr.) in the law firm that represented Argentine companies that are suing Argentina in the ICSID.  The connections reach into various local law firms that represented bondholders.  Among them is Liendo & Asociados, who intervened in the negotiations for the creation of Mercobank at the end of the 1990s, presided over by cavallista Horacio Tomás Liendo (Jr). His father, General Horacio Tomás Liendo, was Interior Minister during the dictatorship and opened the doors of public administration to ex-minister of Economy, Domingo Cavallo.

 

The other consultant with broad lobbying power is the law firm Zang, Bergel & Viñes, made up of Saúl Zang, Salvador Bergel, Ernesto Viñes and Juan Quintana. As foreign advisers or from boards of different companies, these attorneys put at their clients’ disposal a sophisticated legal engineering with the power to lobby in order to guarantee success in the resolution of conflicts.  The firm Zang, Bergel & Viñes intervened in the past in the privatizations of the Savings and Insurance Bank, of Water of Cordoba, and YPF.  Shortly thereafter, the head of the firm, Ernesto Viñes, was named director of YPF when Class C shares expired that belonged to ex-workers of the state oil company, without making any payment to them.  On July 21, 2007, Griesa set an attachment in New York on US$86 million from the government belonging to a fiduciary fund made up of shares the state holds in Banco Hipotecario. A fiduciary dating back to Menemism.  Then, sources connected to the case, cited by the newspaper La Nacion that day, reported that “the legal adviser to that group (it associated with the big vulture fund) is attorney Martín Paolantonio, former partner of the firm Zang, Bergel & Viñes and specialist in the country’s negotiable obligations.”

 

Attorneys, politicians, magnates, media, vultures.  The conspiracies, even the spontaneous ones, are like that.  Sooner or later they are the threads.

 

Chronology of a shipwreck

1/10  The Frigate Libertad docks in the port of Tema, Ghana, and is offered a reception on board.

 

2/10  It was detained in Ghana at the request of an attorney represented by the vulture fund NML, helmed by Paul Singer.

 

289  Argentine sailors remain stranded in Ghana.  The Argentine state spends US$50,0000 per day in port charges.

 

13/10  The Argentine government sends the vice ministers of Defense (Alfredo Forti) and Foreign Relations (Eduardo Zuain)