MIAMI, United States. — The Cuban economist Elías Amor assured that the island’s regime has manipulated what happened in London during the first week of the trial for the non-payment of a debt of 72 million dollars to the investment fund CRF-I.
In an article published on the blog Cubaeconomythe expert maintained that the Cuban side has tried to disqualify CRF-I, assuring that it is a “vulture fund” that only had the objective of suing the Caribbean country in its capacity as guarantor of the debt.
In this sense, Amor referred to a text published by the state press under the title Vulture Fund admits that it always intended to sue the National Bank and the Republic of Cuba.
“A headline that is not true, and that contributes to creating more confusion about what is happening in London where the interests of the two parties are settled over the issue of a debt demanded, and not paid,” said the specialist.
In his column, Amor explains that one of the flanks that Castroism has tried to attack during the trial is the fact that CRF-I representatives who were interrogated by the English barrister who leads the defense of the Cuban side have admitted that the demand before courts was an option since they tried to award the debt titles.
In any case, it is a procedure established within the modus operandi of the so-called venture capital funds and not of a violation or illegality, pointed out the economist.
“Is there any doubt about it? What do venture capital funds do and what is their work procedure is something that not even the most innocent person is unaware of? Other previous experiences in the courts of New York or Paris defended by funds against Argentina or Mexico were accredited by the judges, for the same arguments, and nothing suggests that this time it will be different. One thing is what you can want, and another is what you get”, stressed the author.
According to Amor, “the judge knows perfectly well that CRF, like many other competing funds, specializes in what the Cuban communist regime intends to disqualify, that is, the purchase of Cuban debt securities, and of any country or company in the world, when their prices are low, because the debtors are in a situation of insolvency or bankruptcy, with the aim of later negotiating and achieving a sale that the initial buyer did not reach, because it was not their scope of action”.
The expert recalled that it was the dictatorship that “turned a deaf ear to any claim from creditors, and there is also evidence of that, so that the judicial route was not the first intention, far from it.”
The economist pointed out that the Cuban position “has not managed to obscure that CRF is the legitimate creditor of the debts contracted in the 1980s.”
“The fund is a creditor when it becomes the owner, through purchase, of the debt from its initial holder. And now they are inventing that the claim to the fund is due to the role of a Cuban official, responsible for the preparation and signing of the assignment document, in which the consent of the Bank, and therefore of Cuba, was given so that the rights as creditor were transferred in favor of CRF. But, can anyone believe that a venture capital fund is going to enter this business if everything is not well signed and justified by the highest authorities?
For Elías Amor, the background of the trial in London is the same one that has led the Cuban regime to antagonize the creditors of its extensive debt: not paying.
“The Cuban communists still do not understand that a debt is a debt, and that it has to be paid. There is no possible escape. In Cuba, they nationalized practically all the assets of the private sector without compensation, without compensating anyone, and the operation, at least for the moment, went as they wanted,” the specialist concluded.
