The CRF I consultant, Jeetkumar Gordhandas, admitted this Wednesday that he asked the Banco Nacional de Cuba (BNC) to recognize this investment fund as a creditor of debt Cuban sovereign “with the sole purpose of initiating this legal claim to force its payment,” according to the Efe news agency.
Gordhandas testified in the trial initiated in the Commercial Division of the High Court of London, in the United Kingdom, in order for Judge Sara Cockerill to first determine if the fund established in 2009 in the Cayman Islands is the legitimate creditor of that valued debt at 72 million euros.
These bonds were previously in the name of ICBC Standard Bank, a British subsidiary of the Chinese bank ICBC, and are derived from a loan made to the BCN by two European banking institutions in 1984.
The BNC and the Republic of Cuba, the defendants in this case, maintain that the assignment of the rights of the ICBC to CRF, which was authorized unilaterally on November 25, 2019 by the former Cuban official Raúl Olivera Lozano, then director of Operations of the BCN, and currently imprisoned for having allegedly accepted a bribe from Gordhandas, and for irregularities in that allocation.
Olivera Lozano, 63 years old and sentenced to 13 years in prison, testified in the trial electronically, and said that he “failed to fulfill his responsibilities” by authorizing the transfer of the debt “without previously consulting” the Cuban government, as established by current legislation. on the island for these cases.
The defendants maintain that the assignment of the rights to the fund “was not valid”, given that the document is endorsed only with Olivera’s signature (instead of two) and without the consent of the Ministry of Finance and Prices and the Council of Ministers.
In his statement, Olivera Lozano insisted on his guilt and explained that he unilaterally approved the transfer of the debt after receiving in October 2019 a promise of payment of 25,000 British pounds (30,700 dollars) from a CRF consultant, identified in the documents. like Jeetkumar Gordhandas, reviews the medium.
For their part, CRF lawyers refute it and accuse Cuba of “fabricating pretexts to evade its obligations,” including the May 2021 conviction of Olivera and other officials involved in the transfer.
One of the reasons why the Cuban authorities do not want to recognize CRF as a creditor is because they consider it a “vulture fund”, formed only, they say, to accumulate unpaid Cuban debt and force its collection in the courts.
In this sense, the president of the CRF I fund, David Charters, argued this Thursday before the judge that the investment group “is too small” to be considered “a vulture fund.”
The manager, quoted by Efe, also assured that they do not have “the resources or the size” to be classified as a “vulture fund” and maintained that they are not comparable to the most powerful Elliott Management that in 2016 pursued Argentina’s debt.
Charters stated that the judicial option “is not attractive, as it is slow and costs time and money” and is only used “when there is no alternative.”
He insisted, as Gordhandas did previously, that CRF I tried unsuccessfully since 2013 to negotiate a debt restructuring with the Cuban State and eventually decided to go to trial because “investors were losing patience.”
The lawyer for the Cuban side, Alison Macdonald, alleged that the restructuring offer launched in January 2018, after Cuba had been devastated by Hurricane Irma, “was programmed to take advantage of an impoverished country after a natural catastrophe,” which which CRF rebutted.
London Proceedings: BNC Chairwoman Alleges CRF I Limited Has Failed To Acquire Debt ‘Legally’
During one of the sessions held, the current president of the BNC, Joscelín Río Álvarez, declared that the investment fund “has never legally acquired Cuban debt,” in accordance with the country’s legislation, and it does not appear in the institution’s records ( only your request) as a creditor.
The Spanish agency points out that after the factual statements of the last days, the expert testimonies have begun in this process, initiated, for the Cuban side, by Juan Mendoza Díaz, professor of Procedural Law at the University of Havana, who will be questioned about the rules that regulate the BNC in order to establish whether the authorization to assign contractual rights approved by Olivera in 2019 was legal.
Efe/OnCuba
