The British litigation funding firm Burford Capital filed arbitration with the ICSID against the Argentine State for the Kirchnerist expropriation of YPF in 2012, representing Spanish companies from the Petersen Group, which were minority shareholders of the oil company at the time of nationalization.
The new filing opens a different phase of the dispute that unfolded in the courts of New York, for which the Government of Javier Milei, through the National Treasury Attorney's Office, has already begun to prepare the defense strategy for the Argentine Republic.
According to the agency, the possibility that the claimants would resort to international arbitration had already been anticipated, so the Treasury Attorney's Office had been preparing for this eventuality.
Burford's motion comes after the setback suffered in the U.S. courts, where the New York Court of Appeals overturned a favorable ruling for the claimants that had established a multimillion-dollar payment by Argentina.
In this new phase, the fund invokes the Bilateral Investment Treaty between Argentina and Spain and resorts to the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), an arbitration body belonging to the World Bank Group.
