Compliance Order: Eurobond holders appeal payment freeze

NEW YORK: Holders of Argentine euro-denominated bonds said they were appealing a New York court’s freeze on payment by Buenos Aires, an order that has pushed the country into default. Lawyers for the eurobond holders told the US district court in New York that they would ask an appeals court to overrule Judge Thomas Griesa, who ordered a freeze on their payment last month. Griesa had ruled that the payment to the eurobond holders could not go ahead unless Argentina simultaneously pays off the hedge funds which had sued the country to demand payment on their bonds. Argentina placed $539 million into an account of Bank of New York Mellon at the Argentine central bank at the end of June to meet a scheduled payment. But Griesa forbade the bank from transferring the money to the bondholders. Argentina, he said, must first comply with an order that hedge funds be paid in full for the $1.3 billion in bonds they hold.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 17^th, 2014.

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