Cuba Rejects the CRF Investment Fund as Its Legitimate Creditor
The Royal COurt of Justice, London, UK. Photo: X/ @EmbaCubaFrancia
July 25, 2024 Hour: 11:26 am
This ‘vulture fund’ uses litigation to block Cuba from international financial markets, the BNC said.
On Thursday, the National Bank of Cuba (BNC) rejected before the London Court of Appeal that the vulture fund CRF I Ltd is its legitimate creditor for the collection of 72 million euros in sovereign debt derived from loans signed in the 1980s.
RELATED:
Cuba and Belarus Sign an Agreement for the Protection of Classified Information
During its argument, the BNC, which is dedicated to managing Cuba’s foreign debt incurred before 1997, referred to a 2023 ruling by Judge Sara Cockerill, who concluded that the Cuban state could not be considered a guarantor of a debt in which the investment fund appeared as a creditor.
In the current appeal, the BNC argued that Cockerill was wrong in validating the assignment to CRF I Ltd of the contractual rights over the securities derived from the original loans from European banks.
The assignment was signed on November 25, 2019 by the former BNC Operations Director Raul Olivera-Lozano, who is currently imprisoned in Cuba due to this case.
The National Bank of Cuba said that this assignment is not valid because Olivera-Lozano did not follow the proper internal procedures, which included the requirement of certifying banking operations with two different signatures. The CRF I Ltd fund disputes this requirement, arguing that it was not strictly a banking operation.
The National Bank of Cuba also asserted that it did not receive the required pre-notice for the reassignment of the debt, which was initially contracted in 1984 with Credit Lyonnais and Istituto Banco Italiano banks, and later passed to ICBC Standard Bank.
In its argument before the Court of Appeal, the National Bank of Cuba stated that CRF I Ltd wants to use this litigation to “effectively block Cuba from financial markets” to facilitate the collection of its entire portfolio of unpaid Cuban debt, which amounts to about 1.2 billion euros.
CRF I Ltd was registered the Cayman Islands in 2009 to invest in unpaid sovereign debt. It denies being a “vulture fund” and claims to be a “responsible investor” and that it only sued the Cuban National Bank to encourage it to amicably negotiate a debt restructuring.
Autor: teleSUR/ JF
Fuente: EFE