The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation has issued a ruling of significant legal and strategic impact that redefines the status of YPF S.A. The court clearly affirmed that the oil company's assets are not confused with those of the National State, thus explicitly consolidating its patrimonial and juridical autonomy as a corporation.
By ruling that the judicial handling of the case does not require federal intervention, the Court sets a precedent that can be used in other cases where the scope of patrimonial autonomy of companies with majority state participation is discussed. The court also made a clear distinction from previous cases where federal jurisdiction was declared in cases involving the usurpation of assets of direct ownership of the National State.
This litigation stems from a lawsuit that concluded in 2023 with a conviction against Argentina for over $16 billion for the expropriation of the company in 2012, which included a court order for the transfer of the 51% state share package as payment of the indemnification.
In the United States, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals had suspended the order to deliver shares to allow Argentina to continue with its appeals and defend its legal arguments, preventing the immediate transfer of the shares to the plaintiff funds.
The sentence was signed by Ministers Horacio Rosatti, Carlos Rosenkrantz, and Ricardo Lorenzetti, and is based on Law 26,741, which formalized the expropriation of the 51% share package of YPF in 2012, as well as on norms of the Civil and Commercial Code that clearly distinguish the assets of a corporation from the assets of the State.
The Court also recalled that Article 15 of the expropriation law establishes that YPF is governed by commercial company legislation—particularly Law 19,550—and not by the control norms applicable to public entities, thus reaffirming its independent corporate status.
In those rulings, the property in question was direct ownership of the State, which justified federal intervention. In this case, however, the usurped property belongs to YPF as a commercial company, whose ownership and assets are distinct from those of the State itself.
