The starting point of the litigation was clear: Judge Loretta Preska concluded that the Argentine state, upon taking control of YPF after the expropriation of the 51% stake held by Repsol, failed to comply with the obligation stipulated in the statute to launch an offer for the shares of the remaining minority shareholders. Without this, the political complaint may have public force, but less judicial efficacy. Later, after the bankruptcy of the Petersen entities, Burford Capital purchased or financed those litigious rights and turned that judicial asset into the core of a billion-dollar lawsuit against Argentina. The New York courts focused the case on the breach of the corporate statute at the time of the expropriation and not on the morality or political legitimacy of how the minority shareholders had entered before. This is where the government should act. In any case, the question was raised and has its own weight. If the international condemnation is based on rights that arose from an operation that in Argentina was denounced as part of a power plot between kirchnerism and allied businessmen, then the YPF case ceases to be only a defeat due to a legal malpractice of 2012 and approaches a deeper problem: that of the international consequences of decisions and internal alliances never fully clarified. In abstract terms, that possibility may seem politically potent, but legally it is not simple. In other words, even if strong suspicions persisted in Argentina about the origin of that shareholding, to turn that point into an effective defense would require solid evidence, procedurally usable and capable of altering the already consolidated framework of the case in the U.S. justice system. The judicial dispute over YPF in New York once again put under the microscope not only the 2012 expropriation, but also a previous sequence that remains charged with political questions and judicial complaints in Argentina. That financial architecture was one of the central axes of the political and judicial criticisms that were formulated in those years and their causes should be shown and promoted by the government. On that field, the complaints of Elisa Carrió appear, who maintained that the landing of the Eskenazi family in YPF had not been a conventional business operation, but a maneuver driven from the political power of the time. There appears the hypothesis we are presenting: if the origin of the shareholding was, as the complaints stated, tainted by favoritism, collusion or corruption, then the country would be facing a condemnation originating from a chain of acts whose basic legitimacy deserves to be re-examined. That line of analysis leads to another discussion, even more delicate: whether the lawyers for YPF and the Argentine state should deepen an offensive strategy based on the possible irregular origin of the Petersen (Kirchner) position. Today, this is the most sensitive core of the debate. Because one thing is to discuss whether Axel Kicillof should or should not have launched the offer for the minority shareholders; another, much more serious, is to ask if among those minority shareholders was the residue of a political and business engineering that, if proven, would further compromise those who were then in power. But it is already part of the case. The claim that today benefits Petersen and Burford arose precisely from the shareholding position that the Eskenazi group had acquired in that pre-expropriation stage. That operation was criticized for years because it was structured with a scheme in which the Eskenazis acquired about 25% of the company with a repayment mechanism based on the distribution of the oil company's own dividends. The accusation went even further by suggesting that the Eskenazis were acting as alleged fronts for kirchnerism. The sequence becomes explosive when that story is joined with the current trial. This is, for now, a strong, uncomfortable and unresolved hypothesis. On the other hand, what Kicillof did at that moment, was it a mistake or did he receive orders to act that way? Néstor Kirchner always played his cards looking forward, perhaps he left a school. According to that complaint, Néstor Kirchner would have favored the entry of the group without sufficient own capital, with the purpose of taking indirect control of the oil company through allied businessmen. By Dario Rosatti. Buenos Aires, March 13, 2026 - Total News Agency - TNA. On that basis, in 2023 it condemned the Argentine Republic to pay US$16.1 billion to Petersen and Eton Park, and in 2025 ordered the delivery of the 51% state stake in the oil company, although that measure was later suspended by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit while the appeal is pending. But behind that file there is another story, more political and much more uncomfortable. Petersen Energía, one of the vehicles that litigated against Argentina and whose rights were later financed and exploited by Burford Capital, directly refers to the entry of the Petersen Group of the Eskenazi family into YPF between 2008 and 2011.
