President Cristina Fernández defended on Friday her debt reduction policies and blasted the so-called vulture funds and multilateral organizations but also admitted Argentina was willing to pay holdouts on the same conditions that those who accepted the 2005 and 2010 debt restructuring.
“We are representing a government, and governments will not be told to do things that fundamentally violate their principles” lawyer Jonathan Blackman told the Manhattan US appeals court.
The long-awaited showdown in a US appeals court this week pits Argentina against a group of investors who refused to swap their debt after the country's historic 2002 default.
Argentina has made its final written arguments ahead of a February 27 US courtroom showdown against holdout bondholders demanding full payment of capital plus interests for sovereign debt from the default of more than a decade ago.
Following Friday’s IMF ‘declaration of censure’ on Argentina because of the lack of reliability in its inflation and GDP stats, and the country’s first reaction virtually describing the Fund as mother of all financial evils, Minister of Economy Hernan Lorenzino announced a new ‘national’ Consumers Prices Index to be implemented in the course of this year and which will replace the current GBA-IPC.
Hedge fund investors who refused to join two sovereign debt restructurings by Argentina urged a US court in New York to force the country to pay them.
Investors holding 1 billion dollars worth of restructured Argentine debt said they also appealed to US District Judge Thomas Griesa’s ruling that they fear would trigger another default and prevent them from being paid principal and interest due on their bonds next month.
Argentina’s Ambassador to the United States, Jorge Argüello, assured on Monday that “Argentina will not pay the price for the financial irrationality of the North, and under no circumstances will tolerate the vulture funds’ blackmailing.”
The Argentine government will appeal on Monday the New York federal court ruling from Thomas Griesa which orders the country to pay 1.3billion dollars to the investment funds which held out from the (2005 and 2010) restructuring of the 2002 defaulted sovereign debt.
Argentina filed on Tuesday a petition for a retrial at the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals over a debt ruling that would force the country to pay holdout creditors owning bonds in default since 2002.