After being tied to the dock for several years, the ARA Libertad, the Argentine Navy’s training ship, is sailing again. For the last three years, the ship has been entangled in a more than decade long battle over Argentine debt related to a financial crisis in 2002. In early March, Argentina settled the dispute with its remaining creditors, including several US hedge fund “vulture” capitalists, and shortly thereafter, ARA Libertad was made ready for sea. On June 3-7, she sailed to the US to participate in Sail Baltimore. She then sailed for Norfolk where she was one of the featured attractions at Norfolk Harborfest from June 9-12. Last week ARA Libertad was at Pier 86 in New York before sailing for Amsterdam on Saturday.
The Argentine Ministry of Defense has also put up a new web site with information about the ship and its itinerary. The site also featurs a 360 degree virtual tour.
In October 2012, we posted about how the Libertad and her crew of over 200, while docked in port of Tema, Ghana, were seized by a court order obtained by NML Capital Ltd., a subsidiary of Elliot Capital Management, a hedge fund run by the US billionaire vulture capitalist Paul Singer. In December 2012, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea ruled that Ghana’s detention of the ship was in violation of international law and the ship was released.
Singer and other “vulture” fund operators buy sovereign debt at a deep discount and then demand full payment, often seizing assets owned by the country if they are not paid. Before attempting to seize the Libertad, Singer’s group in 2007 tried to get a court order to detain the Tango 01, the Argentine presidential airplane, and to seize fuel money from the aircraft’s pilots.
In the recent debt deal, it has been reported that Singer’s fund netted $2.4 billion—10 to 15 times its original investment.
The only difference between Paul Singer and a Mafia debt collector is that the Mafia does not buy sovereign debts.
While one might indeed not admire the methods used by Singer to recover debts surely if one borrows money one expects to repay it. Recovering sovereign debts is extremely difficult so the risk Singer takes seems to be enormous.
Argentina is a particularly irresponsible country which elects the strangest people to rule it. They were amazed when the U.K. stood up to them when they attacked the Falklands Islands.
On one occasion when docked in Buenos Aires gunfire started one evening when the National Police attacked the Port Police which I think came under their Armada. All very strange.
At present the country is going from chaos to crisis once again.
Good Watch.