MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina admits Libertad is the 29th asset impound case by ‘vulture’ funds

Minister Timerman pledging Argentina will recover the frigate, “as we recovered the other 28 assets”

Argentina finally admitted that the retaining of the training frigate ARA Libertad in Ghana is not an isolated case since the so called ‘vulture’ funds have managed to impound a total of 28 assets including the presidential aircraft Tango 01, bank accounts, property and even a satellite.

These 28 assets belonging to the Argentine State have been impounded by the vulture funds which refused to join the swap of defaulted sovereign bonds during the presidencies of Nestor and Cristina Kirchner, admitted Foreign minister Hector Timerman speaking at Government House, Casa Rosada,

“Until the case of the frigate ARA Libertad, the vulture funds managed to impound 28 assets from the Argentine state”, said Timerman, but in all those cases Argentina managed to recover the disputed assets.

Timerman also announced that the government has decided to litigate in international courts the release of the frigate retained in the port of Tema. Three options are under consideration according to diplomatic sources: the Law of the Sea international tribunal; the International Court of Justice in The Hague or arbitration.

After reading the list of impounded assets (and recovered), Timerman pledged that “we are going to recover ARA Libertad as we recovered all of the other government assets”.

The impounded assets also included the SACD/Aquarius satellite jointly developed by Argentina with NASA and orbiting since last year and patents from scientific research centres involving atomic energy plus agriculture and industrial technology. However all cases, tangible or non tangible, referred to assets in the US or in Europe.

Timerman’s announcement comes after the failed political attempt in Ghana when top officials from the Foreign and Defence ministries were sent to Accra and later with his own non performing lobbying at the United Nations.