Gesamtzahl der Seitenaufrufe

Samstag, 13. Oktober 2012

Frigate Libertad....der Argy-Blätterwald rauscht...

Frigate Libertad:
 
La Nacion: “The Frigate Libertad remains in Ghana: court rules against Argentina”
 
La Nacion: “A trip with surprises and a cost of US$50,000 a day”
 
MercoPress: “Argentina sends top level political mission to Ghana after the ARA Libertad”
 
The Economist: “Caught napping”
 
New York Observer: “Hedge Fund Manager Scores Point Against Argentinean Navy; JP Morgan’s Third-Quarter Profit Rises: Roundup”
 
StarTribune: “Investor demands $20 million for tall ship; Argentina says Ghana ruling could harm relations”
 
Forbes: “No Liberty for Libertad: Argentina’s Battle With Hedge Fund Billionaire for Navy Vessel Continues”
 
The Wall Street Journal: “2nd Update: Argentine Navy Ship Remains Impounded in Ghana”
 
The Wall Street Journal: “Ghana ‘violating intl norms’ over ship: Argentina”
 
Fox Business: “Ghana court rules Argentine naval ship seizure was legal”
 
Financial Times: “Ghana: ship’s going nowhere (for now)”
 
The Epoch Times: “Ghana Court: Don’t Free Argentine Warship”
 
New York Post: “Hedge fund honcho Singer can hold Argentina’s ship, court rules”
 
IMF:
 
Ambito Financiero: “Heavyweights at the IMF: the Creditors vs. Debtors match is replayed”
 
·         AF ran a correspondent’s sidebar from the IMF/World Bank summit, entitled “Avatars in Tokyo”, with a series of bulleted items.  The third item:
“Just the mention of the word ‘Argentina’ in that IIF seminar set off strong criticism among the attendees over the local management of the economy.  Bankers and investors didn’t miss the chance to allude to – at times even with animosity or oral belligerence – the latest measures adopted.  An economic report compiled by Martín Castellano, Ramón Aracena and Todd Martinez, of the IIF, said it all with its title: ‘Argentina is playing with fire’.”
 
Argentine Economy:
 
MercoPress: “Argentina inflation in nine months of 2012 reached 18%, says “Congress Index”
 
NASDAQ: “SURVEY: Argentina Expected to Say 12-Month Inflation 9.9% in Sept.”
 
The Wall Street Journal: “S&P Keeps Argentina’s T&C Rating AT ‘B’ After Chaco Payment”
 
Buenos Aires Herald: “‘CB is not restricting provinces’ access to dollars’”
 
·         La Nacion reports that the Global Editors Network (GEN), based in Paris, has called on the media of the world to focus its attention on the December 7 deadline for the implementation of Argentina’s Media Law, calling it “the deadline for freedom of the press.”
 
Global Relations:
 
MercoPress: “Argentine energy policy further limits methanol production in south Chile”
 
Freedom of the Press:
 
MercoPress: “Global editors warn on ongoing campaign in Argentina against independent media”
 
Huffington Post: “Freedom of Press as Understood by the Argentine Media Monopoly”
 
·         La Nacion reports that the Global Editors Network (GEN), based in Paris, has called on the media of the world to focus its attention on the December 7 deadline for the implementation of Argentina’s Media Law, calling it “the deadline for freedom of the press.”
JORGE ARGUELLO on Twitter and Blog:
·         He tweeted several items about the vice-presidential debate in the U.S., noting the mention that both candidates are Catholic, and were asked their views on abortion (a hot topic in Argentina currently).
 
TRENDING TOPICS/ARGENTINA on Twitter:
·         Among the top ten are Nobel Peace Prize (6), La Union Europea (7) and Biden (8)

 
La Nacion
The Frigate Libertad remains in Ghana: court rules against Argentina
 
Friday, October 12, 2012
 
By Martin Dinatale
 
In the last place you’d think in the world, and with perhaps one of the most symbolic assets of Argentina’s patrimony, the government yesterday suffered a heavy international legal blow: a judge in Ghana determined that the Frigate Libertad could not sail from the port of Tema, where it has been anchored for the last 10 days, over a complaint against the Argentine state that the vulture funds of the United States brought.
 
The legal decision in Ghana echoed a request issued by a New York court and is the first step for a possible attachment of assets from the Argentine state.  Thus it would be the first concrete action against the Casa Rosada, which refuses to pay the totality of the bonds to the creditors.
 
The government’s concern reached such depths that last night it decided to send Vice Foreign Minister Eduardo Zuain and Vice Defense Minister Alfredo Forti to Ghana with the intention of avoiding the attachment of the ship in which 289 sailors are stranded.  The order that President Cristina Kirchner issued to her envoys was blunt: “Argentina will not surrender its sovereignty to the vulture funds”. 
 
However, the decision by Judge Richard Adjei Frimpong, of the Commercial Court of Accra, seems definitive on the request for attachment from NML Capital Ltd., a branch of the firm Elliott Management.  The judge in Ghana determined that the Argentine ship lacks immunity and in this manner he blocked it from sailing from the port of Tema.
 
The Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry tried in vain through the diplomatic route to avoid the judicial decision.  Attorney Larry Otoo, contracted by Argentina in New York, and Argentina’s ambassador to Nigeria, Susana Pataro, who went to Ghana, also didn’t manage to avoid the decision by JudgeFrimpong.
 
"The situation is very complicated and all indications are that the path to an attachment of assets is inevitable,” said a qualified source at the Foreign Ministry to LA NACION, who said there was a climate of nervousness and unease in the Palacio San Martín yesterday.
 
Towards the evening, the situation became irreversible and the reports sent by Ambassador Pataro were discouraging.  Argentina filed a complaint against the detention of the ship to claim sovereign immunity due to its nature as a military ship that cannot be the object of creditors.  But the Ghanaian court ruling rejected this argument.  “The defense has made it clear in the transaction agreement that such immunity was renounced and from my point of view the action that the plaintiff seeks complies with the law,” said Judge Frimpong.
 
Ace Ankomah, attorney for NML Capital, told Reuters that his clients were seeking a deposit for at least US$20 million before the ship is released and said that Argentina owes his clients “more than US$300 million”.  But in Buenos Aires there were orders to reject the payment of bail and in a statement from the Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry it was said that Argentina will insist on the judicial route for recovering the ship.
 
"With this measure, which compromises Ghana’s international responsibility, the judicial issue adds a political dimension that affects bilateral relations,” warned the government.  The government’s statement points out that it “trusts that the response” from Ghana “will allow the controversy to be brought to a swift end.”  But it warned that if not, it will use “all available resources, both in the bilateral and international arena, for the acknowledgement of its sovereign rights.”  Last night, Argentina’s strategy was not known.  It was only known that together with Zuain and Forti would travel a grou pof diplomats from the legal section of the Foreign Ministry.  The government limited itself to saying that Ghana’s decision “violates international law, rooted in a lawsuit filed by speculative funds with bonds in default.”
 
In that sense, the Casa Rosada understood that “international rules enshrine immunities that the ship enjoys as a war ship.”  Thus, the Argentine foreign ministry lamented that the Accra judge had taken the arguments of NML as valid to give way to what it considers an “illegitimate attachment” of the ship.
 
As an extreme measure under consideration, there is the possibility that the next step in the Ghana courts would be to accept the request of the bondholders to put the ship up for auction.  It’s not clear if that decision would fall to the Ghana court.  Nor is the monetary value of the Frigate Libertad defined, beyond which it is considered an emblematic asset of Argentine patrimony.  It’s only known that since it’s been held under judicial order in the port of Tema for 10 days, the ship has had to pay US$50,000 in daily maintenance.  The government said yesterday that U.S. Judge Thomas Griesa, who issued the ruling that is trying to be executed in Ghana, ruled in September 2008 against NML by excluding from the execution of the sentence “all property that is found or is understood to be used in connection with military activity or that is under the control of a military or defense agency” by not being subject to embargo.
 
The Frigate Liberty sailed on June 2 from Buenos Aires.  Fifteen days ago it was in Senegal and had no legal problem at all.  After its stop in Ghana it was scheduled to go to Angola.
 
Yesterday, in the United States the holders of bonds in default from Argentina celebrated the Ghana decision.  “One must applaud the authorities in Ghana.  To maintain the rule of law speaks well of that country,” said Robert Raben, of American Task Force Argentina, one of the most active pressure groups from the American creditors.  The Casa Rosada said that the fight with the vulture funds “is not an issue of accountability but of sovereignty.”
 
With collaboration of Silvia Pisani from Washington
 
 
La Nacion
A trip with surprises and a cost of US $50,000 a day
 
Friday, October 12, 2012
 
By Mariano De Vedia
 
The four days that the Frigate Libertad had been scheduled to remain in Ghana have tripled.  And the cost for continuing to be docked in the local port of Tema, estimated at 50,000 dollars a day, grows at the rate of a taxi meter.
 
Far from the judicial struggles, but uneasy from the detention, the 289 officials, subofficials and marines that since June 2 have been on the 43rd instructional trip of the teaching vessel from the navy, together with 23 Uruguayan and Chilean graduates and 13 guests, are trying to put themselves above the emergency they didn’t prepare for and in which they don’t have any room to act.
 
"The sailors prepared us for an emergency and we’re trained for contingencies on the high sea.  This is unprecedented,” said naval machinist Fernando Morales to LA NACION, a veteran of the Malvinas and vice president of the Argentine Naval League, which is following attentively each news bulletin from Ghana from Buenos Aires.
 
The cost of US$ 50,000 per day, he said, is more than the US$30,000 of any merchant ship, while they navigate with less than 20 crew members.
 
The frigate already docked in 11 ports (Salvador, Lisbom, Cádiz, Casablanca, Dakar and Tema, among others) and it’s the first time that Ghana has been on the itinerary.  “The travel plan is decided by the Defense and Foreign ministries, but there is always the political decision to prioritize the relations with this or that country or region,” said an experienced military source to LA NACION.  This year priority was given to the South Atlantic and African countries.
 
In normal conditions, the sailors spend their day amidst studies, work and recreation.  “The emergency altered the route, but also academic activities are held on board, while securely reviewing navigation practices,” Morales said.
 
"The instruction is complemented, for example, with tasks of maintenance of machines and motors, short maneuvers and smaller embarkations, and there is no lack of sports,” said the sailor, recalling that one fo the most valuable missions of the trip is the training in culture of work and teamwork.
 
Arriving at the port of Paramaibo, in Suriname, the subofficials Ivana Vanesa González and Gabriela Carolemos –two of the 15 women that make up the crew – spoke of their experience to La Gaceta Marinera, the navy’s official newspaper.  “It was the first time that I got to handle a real maneuver and I didn’t feel nerves or vertigo,” said González, who has second class grade.
 
Sources from the navy confirmed that all are free to move about, despite the detention of the ship.  “The crew is not detained.  They leave the ship and move freely without inconveniences,” said Morales.  And he said that the crew has mini-buses at its disposal to go back and forth to different parts of the city.
 
"There is no danger of ending up without provisions.  The ship has logistical supplies and there is no risk of running out,” said the leader of the Naval League.  He estimated that if the detention is prolonged, it might be needed to repatriate the cadets, but that would be a decision of the Foreign and Defense ministries.  “For the moment, they have not announced a Plan B,” he said.
 
If the crew returns, a minimum security allocation must be left behind with capacity to navigate the ship, they said at the Navy. 
 
"There are no precedents of attachment of a military ship.  It’s prohibited by the International Convention of the Law of the Sea.  It couldn’t be used even with Great Britain, over the Malvinas conflict,” Morales concluded, as he awaited news.
 
 
MercoPress
 
Friday, October 12, 2012
 
Deputy Foreign minister Eduardo Zuaim and Alfredo Forti are on their way to Accra where they will try to convince government and judicial authorities to release the vessel arguing that the seizure is contrary to international law and conventions.
 
On Thursday an Accra court rejected the plea put forward by Argentina to release the ARA Libertad training ship, which has been detained with its crew since October 2nd.
 
“There are no sufficient grounds for the plaintiff (Argentina) to disallow a court sentence. The motion has been rejected,” stated Judge Richard Adjei Frimpong, of the Accra Commercial Tribunal.
 
 
The Economist
 
Friday, October 12, 2012
 
WHEN the Libertad, an Argentine frigate used for training naval cadets, arrived in Ghana on October 1st, the 220 crew members and 110 students on board expected a warm welcome. They had been greeted by their national anthem in Venezuela and invited to play a football match in Portugal. But officials in the port of Tema detained the ship, executing a legal injunction obtained by an American hedge fund.
 
The Libertad was the latest in a line of Argentine assets that the government’s creditors have tried to snatch. In 2001 the country ceased payment on $81 billion of bonds. Their price plunged, letting risk-seeking investors buy them for pennies.
 
 
New York Observer
 
Friday, October 12, 2012
 
By Patrick Clark
 
Naval enthusiast Paul Singer of Elliott Management and secretive Mexican financier David Martinez are still battling in court, according to The New York Times. Mr. Martinez is said to have a $140 million painting by Jackson Pollock in his Time Warner Center apartment, but no one is willing to stake their name on it. Also unconfirmed: Mr. Singer has plans to squeeze a 100-foot tall sailing ship into a giant glass bottle.
 
Which is to say, a court in Ghana ruled in favor of Mr. Singer yesterday, affirming the hedge fund manager’s right to seize a training ship owned by the Argentinean navy over unpaid sovereign bonds. The Elliott Management affiliate contesting the issue is believed to be asking $20 million to return the three-masted frigate.
 
 
StarTribune
 
Thursday, October 11, 2012
 
ACCRA, Ghana - International investors put a $20 million price tag on an Argentine navy training ship Thursday after a judge in Ghana ruled that the ARA Libertad cannot set sail until the South American country settles claims for unpaid debts.
 
The U.S. creditors are demanding payment in full on Argentine bonds for which most investors accepted 30 cents on the dollar in 2005.
 
Justice Richard Agyei-Frimpong had ordered the tall sailing ship held at Tema harbor days earlier after creditors cited judgments in the U.S. and Britain approving the seizure of Argentine assets anywhere in the world. On Thursday, he said Argentina failed to persuade him to remove the injunction.
 
Argentina's government said the ruling violates international norms as well as rulings by judges in the U.S., Germany and France that found Argentine military vessels immune from the seizures.
 
 
Forbes
 
Thursday, October 11, 2012
 
The incredible story of the Argentine vessel detained in Ghana at the request of a hedge fund tied to billionaire Paul Singer continues.  On Thursday, a court in Ghana rejected the Argentine state’s request to grant the Fragata Libertad diplomatic immunity, despite it being a military ship.  NML Capital, the hedge fund, is looking to extract payment from the Argentine state on sovereign bonds that were part of the largest sovereign debt default in 2001 and 2002.  The Administration of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner called Singer’s Elliott Capital a “vulture fund” and accused it of using immoral and “usurious practices,” while claiming the vessel is protected by immunity granted by the Vienna Convention.
 
 
The Wall Street Journal
 
Thursday, October 11, 2012
 
By Shane Romig
 
BUENOS AIRES--An Argentine Navy cadet-training ship will remain in Ghana after a court in the West African country rejected Argentina's appeal of an order detaining the vessel in a dispute with creditors.
 
Argentina argued the three-masted sailing ship ARA Libertad sailed to Ghana to perform military functions and United Nations conventions protect it from seizure.
 
Ghana commercial court judge Richard Adjei-Frimpong disagreed with that argument Thursday, saying in his ruling that Ghanaian law doesn't protect military assets.
 
On Oct. 2, the judge ordered the 130-meter long ARA Libertad held at the Port of Tema until Argentina honors U.S. judicial rulings that awarded about $1.6 billion to Elliott Management Corp.'s NML Capital Ltd.
 
 
The Wall Street Journal
 
Thursday, October 11, 2012
 
Argentina's defense ministry on Thursday accused Ghana of violating "international norms" by refusing to release one of its warships and said it was sending two senior officials to Accra for talks.
 
Earlier in the day, a judge in Ghana rejected a bid by Buenos Aires to have one of its warships released from a port near Accra, where it is being held under a court order linked to a debt dispute.
 
"This decision violates international norms which protect the immunity to which this ship is entitled as a warship of the Argentine Republic," the defense ministry said.
 
 
Fox Business
 
Thursday, October 11, 2012
 
By Kwasi Kpodo
 
ACCRA –  A court in Ghana upheld as legal on Thursday the detention of an Argentine naval vessel seized under a court order by creditors pursuing the South American nation over its 2002 debt default.
 
Argentina declared a sovereign default a decade ago and now faces a raft of lawsuits in U.S. courts by bondholders seeking state asset freezes to recover the value of defaulted bonds.
 
The Libertad, a navy frigate with 200 crew, was detained in Ghana's eastern port of Tema on October 2 under a court order sought by NML Capital Ltd, an affiliate of the investment firm Elliott Management.
 
 
Financial Times
 
Thursday, October 11, 2012
 
By Rob Minto
 
A court in Ghana has rejected an appeal by Argentina to release the navy vessel ARA Libertad, after the ship was seized last week at the request of NML Capital, a hedge fund.
 
Quick recap: NML is run by Elliott Management, a hedge fund founded by Paul Singer. The fund lost out in Argentina’s bond default of 2001, and has been tracking the course of the Libertad, waiting for the ship to stop in a port where it would have a chance to enforce legal judgments previously awarded by UK and US courts.
 
 
The Epoch Times
 
Thursday, October 11, 2012
 
By Alex Johnston
 
A court in Ghana ruled Thursday that the country should not allow an Argentine naval ship and its crew to leave, after claims against Argentina by a U.S.-based creditor.
 
The Libertad training ship has been detained in a port near Accra, the capital of Ghana, since last week, through the actions of U.S. hedge fund Elliott Management, attempting to collect a debt from Argentina. There are more than 200 crew members on the vessel.
 
“There are no sufficient grounds for the plaintiff [Argentina] to disallow a court sentence. The motion has been rejected,” Accra Commercial Tribunal Judge Richard Adjei Frimpong said, according to the Buenos Aires Herald.
 
The Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority said they will hand over the ship to Argentina if they get a court order.
 
 
New York Post
 
Thursday, October 11, 2012
 
By Kaja Whitehouse
 
That’s Captain Singer to you!
 
New York hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer gets to hold on to Argentina’s prized navy vessel, the ARA Libertad, a Ghana court ruled today.
 
The court ordered the ship to be detained at port in Ghana’s capital city until it can rule on whether Argentina waived its sovereign rights on its defaulted debt.
 
Until then, Singer will be captain of the ship, which docked in Accra last week as part of a good-will tour carrying some 70 navy cadets and more than 200 passengers.
 
 
Ambito Financiero
Heavyweights at the IMF: the Creditors vs. Debtors match is replayed
 
Friday, October 12, 2012
 
Tokyo (Special Report) – It was a variant of the existing battle between the Davos Economic Forum and the Social Forum of Porto Alegre.  Yesterday, at the Tokyo Palace Hotel there was a seminar about restructuring of debt by countries organized by the Institute of International Finance (which is made up of the main banks on the planet) and which included the presence of various experts in the area and the representative of the bondholders or creditors, Hans Hume.  But in parallel there was another organized by the NGOs at the Tokyo International Forum, in which Finance Secretary Adrian Cosentino participated, and in which an atmosphere that was anti-adjustments and pro-defense of debtors could be breathed in.
 
The first of them had an audience of 500 people, all of them members of the IIF.  As always, Hume railed in various parts of his speech against Argentina saying that “it’s not better after a default and a strong haircut.”  According to his view, “Argentina has no access to international credit” and even mentioned, one could say even celebrated, the current attachment in Ghana on the Libertad.  Also speaking during that part of the IIF seminar was former assistant Treasury secretary of the United States, David Mulford, today vice chairman of Credit Suisse. He avoided speaking about Argentina, as he has a case pending over the mega-swap by Cavallo in 2001, but he spoke of Greece.  “The restructuring that was done had an excessive charge on the private sector while other actors like the European Central Bank didn’t have one.  It sought to get the country to again have access to the capital markets and that didn’t happen for the excessive pressure that was put on the private sector.”  What Mulford was saying is that private investors didn’t return to betting when then knew that there would be privileged creditors always collecting before they would, like the BCE. 
 
Noisy
 
Less formal and more noisy was the seminar organized by different NGOs like Jubilee USA, which proposes the forgiveness of debts and a halt to cuts.  In addition to Cosentino, there was also Norwegian Development Minister Heckki Holmas; German Finance Minister Ludger Schuknecht; and Yuefen Li, of UNCTAD. The Argentine finance secretary spoke about the process of Argentina’s debt restructuring and its diminishment.
 
In addition to the numbers that are habitually presented on the country’s debt today, the variation of GDP and the relation between both variables, he referred to “the existing hole in the international financial architecture for an adequate treatment of sovereign debt restructuring, a mechanism that does exist for companies.”  On that he said that despite having achieved a high 93% adhesion in the debt swaps, “the country has to deal with the holdouts, the vulture funds.”
 
 
MercoPress
 
Friday, October 12, 2012
 
The data was presented at Congress by lawmakers Federico Pinedo, Pablo Tonelli, Paula Bertol (PRO), Ricardo Buryaile, Elsa Álvarez, Julio Martínez (UCR), Eduardo Amadeo (Peronist Front) and Patricia Bullrich (Unión por Todos).

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