A New York appeals court overturned a ruling that had ordered Argentina to pay $16.1 billion in damages over the 2012 nationalization of oil company YPF, according to the decision seen by AFP.
On September 8, 2023, Judge Loretta Preska of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York had ordered Argentina to compensate companies that, in her view, were harmed by the nationalization of YPF.
Argentine President Javier Milei described the favorable ruling as “historic and unthinkable, the greatest legal achievement in the country’s history,” in a speech in Buenos Aires.
Including interest, the amount would have risen to around $18 billion, the Argentine government said in a statement.
In 2012, Argentina expropriated a 51% stake in YPF, which had been partially controlled by Spanish energy giant Repsol.
Two years later, Repsol was compensated with $5 billion to settle its dispute, but the same did not apply to minority shareholders such as Petersen Energía and Eton Park Capital, which together held a 25.4% stake in YPF.
In 2015, they filed a lawsuit arguing that Argentina had failed to launch a tender offer as required by law.
Litigation fund Burford Capital, which specializes in financing lawsuits, paid $16.6 million to back the claims and would have benefited from 38% of the Preska ruling.
Argentina had filed multiple appeals since the 2023 ruling in an effort to overturn it. The payment would have had a severe impact on the country’s reserves, estimated at about $43.536 billion.
The situation worsened further in June 2025, when Judge Preska ordered Argentina to hand over its 51% stake in YPF as partial payment of the damages. That decision was appealed, and in August a court ruled that the shares did not have to be transferred.
