MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

NML-Capital targeting second Argentine navy vessel docked in South Africa

ARA Espora was on joint naval exercises when it broke down and had to be taken in for repairs.

A second Argentine navy vessel has been targeted by NML-Capital which apparently has contracted a renowned South African law office to impound the corvette ARA Espora.

The vessel had to abandon the joint naval exercise Atlassur IX with South Africa, Brazil and Uruguay because of mechanical problems and was pulled to Simonstown where she is undergoing repairs that could demand two months.

According to Buenos Aires media, the Argentine embassy in Pretoria is aware of the situation and ready for an immediate legal reply if there is litigation with one of the funds under control of Paul Singer that successfully impounded the Argentine navy’s flagship ARA Libertad in Ghana where she remains retained.

However contrary to what happened in Accra where Argentina has minimum contacts, with South Africa there are strong political and trade links, and President Jacob Zuma is considered a good friend of Argentina, according to Buenos Aires media.

Furthermore Elliot Capital three years ago was attempting something similar buying South African companies bonds at rock bottom prices to later try and recuperate the face value plus interests. Apparently the ‘vulture fund’ has yet to win a case in South Africa although several are pending.

Argentine economist and banker Federico Sturzenegger in a book under the heading “Default and lessons from a decade of crisis”, (obviously referred to Argentina), says that ‘vulture funds’ rarely have favourable sentences and equally rarely manage to impound assets of countries or corporations which they are demanding.

In the book Stursenegger mentions 35 known cases of this kind of litigations in the last twenty years, of which in only six cases did the funds recover 100% of bonds face-value; 15 were lost; in six less than a third for which they sued, and from the rest there is no available information.

However Elliot Capital was considered one of the most successful hedge funds by Wall Street last year, with a profit of 14.6%, very uncommon in these lean days. Like wise The New York Times described him as “one of the most daring hedge fund managers”, but it is difficult Mr Singer accepts new clients, ‘unless you are the wife of the Republican presidential candidate”.

Paul Singer and his funds have similar cases pending with Ivory Coast, Nicaragua and Turkmenistan, all countries involved in armed internal conflicts.