Stories that caught our eye: June 27 to July 4

 

YPF BOMBSHELL

Last Monday Manhattan judge Loretta Preska ordered Argentina to hand over 51 percent of YPF shares within the next fortnight to the hedge funds Eton Park and Burford, plaintiffs against the country over the 2012 expropriation of the oil company. The move is considered implementation of a prior first instance ruling sentencing the country to pay US$16.1 billion plus interest. President Javier Milei immediately confirmed that he would appeal the ruling before proceeding to blame Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof (Economy minister at the time of the nationalisation) for the country’s plight in the harshest terms as a “useless Soviet imbecile.” The following day Preska added the Bainbridge holdout fund to those entitled to YPF shares.

 

LULA MEETS CRISTINA

One of the first actions of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva upon arriving here on Thursday for the Mercosur Summit was to meet up with his former colleague Cristina Fernández de Kirchner for almost an hour in the Constitución flat where she is undergoing house arrest for corruption, afterwards celebrating the visit, which was only given court approval the previous day on condition that the calm of the neighbourhood was not disturbed. TOF (Tribunal Federal Oral) 2 court is also mulling appeals by the defence against the obligation to wear an electronic monitor anklet and by the prosecution against her being granted house arrest instead of being sent to prison.

 

UPROAR(S) IN CONGRESS

The midweek session of Congress was unduly turbulent with Speaker Martín Menem obliged to lift it after three Unión por la Patria deputies started shoving Budget Committee chairman José Luis Espert (La Libertad Avanza-Buenos Aires Province), recently the target of a horseshit attack on his home by Quilmes Kirchnerite militants, for allegedly insulting Florencia Kirchner. The agenda, including university financing and the crisis at the Garrahan Children’s Hospital, had to be rolled over for next week. There was also a slanging-match between the deputies Sabrina Ajmechet (PRO), Juan Carlos Giordano (Frente de Izquierda) and Lorena Pokoik (Unión por la Patria) with accusations of “anti-Semitism” and “complicity with genocide” exchanged. When swearing in as part of the left’s custom of rotating its deputies, Giordano had phrased his oath as “for the 30,000 missing, the socialist motherland and support for the heroic Palestinian people against the genocide of the Zionist state of Israel.”

 

‘$LIBRA’ PROBE

The investigation into the collapse of the ’$LIBRA’ cryptocurrency took a new twist as the testimony of its mastermind Hayden Mark Davis in a New York federal court emerged last weekend, pinpointing President Javier Milei at the centre of a debacle which cost its investors millions of dollars. In his testimony Davis denied any fraud, attributing the plunge in the cryptocurrency’s value to Milei’s decision to withdraw his support. He also denied having any privileged information or connection with speculative “snipers” who massively bought up $LIBRA shares at its launch to sell them off at a profit. These statements complicate Milei’s situation even though he has yet to be formally indicted.

 

ANTI-STRIKE DECREE OVERRULED

A labour court (Juzgado Nacional de Primera Instancia del Trabajo No. 3 under judge Moira Fullana) responded rapidly to an injunction presented by the CGT trade union umbrella, declaring last Monday Decree 340/2025 limiting the right to strike in a wide range of activities considered to be essential services to be unconstitutional as directly attacking the right to strike and violating international treaties among other grounds. Judge Fullana saw no justification for this decree with Congress functioning normally.

 

LOVE ME, LOVE MY DOG

President Javier Milei was joined by his dog Conan – “one of my five four-legged children” – last Sunday as well as by his sister, presidential chief-of-staff Karina Milei, when he participated in a broadcast seeking donations for the animal shelters Patitas de la Calle and Huellas del Sur. The English mastiff is reportedly not the original but one of the five clones of Conan (2004–2017), for which Milei paid US$50,000 to the company PerPETuate Inc – though the President offered no clarification, only describing the pooch as the “father” of his other dogs.

 

POVERTY MASTER CLASS

Late last month the Human Capital Ministry reported that poverty in Argentina had dropped to 31.7 percent in the first quarter of this year, well below the 38.1 percent in the second half of 2024, as calculated by INDEC statistics bureau earlier this year, while the same ministry had calculated poverty in the first quarter of 2024 at 54.8 percent. President Javier Milei celebrated the figure as “(Human Capital Minister Sandra) Pettovello’s masterclass,” adding the message in his X social network account: “BAD DAY FOR MANDRILES (apes). Poverty and destitution continue falling. LA LIBERTAD AVANZA. VIVA LA LIBERTAD CARAJO.” The Ministry communiqué attributed this success to economic policies bringing inflation to a halt and a focus on making transfers to the most vulnerable sectors direct and transparent. The historic peak of poverty in Argentina was 57.5 percent in October, 2002.

 

MUSK COOLS ON MILEI

In the midst of a fierce debate in the United States on the country’s fiscal situation, tycoon Elon Musk did a rewind on the famous video showing him brandishing a chainsaw with President Javier Milei in Los Angeles last February, recognising that it took place but adding that Milei “lacked empathy” with his fiscal message since the idea should be to cut out waste and fraud, not public spending as such.

 

IRAN BLASTS MILEI, AMIA TRIAL

The Tehran government last Tuesday lashed out at President Javier Milei and at federal judge Daniel Rafecas who has opened a trial in absentia against Iranian officials for masterminding the 1994 terrorist bomb attack against the AMIA Jewish community centre causing 85 deaths. “The Argentine government has abandoned its traditional stance of neutrality and multilateralism to align itself with the Zionist régime and the United States,” accused an article in the Tuesday edition of the Tehran Times. Isaa Kameli, the director-general for the Americas in the Iranian Foreign Ministry, described that decision as “contrary to international law,” also linking the initiative of Rafecas to what he called the recent Israeli defeat in its military offensive against Iran. Nor was the Argentine diplomat Rafael Grossi, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), spared criticism. The Argentine Embassy in Tehran has been vacant since June, the month in which Milei paid his second visit to Israel. 

 

AVE ARGENTUM, VALE PESO

Deputy Ricardo López Murphy (Republicanos Unidos-City) last Wednesday presented a bill in Congress to strip three zeroes off the peso as from the start of next year and rename it “Argentum,” which would "greater clarity to transactions," presumably by bringing the local currency unit closer to the dollar. The peso would be phased out over the first six months of 2026. Introduced in 1881, the peso has seen the removal of 13 zeroes since 1970.

 

COLD SNAP BITES

Mar del Plata’s municipal authorities last Thursday suspended classes at all levels due to gas supplies running short both locally and nationwide, following an emergency meeting called by Mayor Guillermo Montenegro. Restaurants and cafés were also ordered to close at nightfall with hospitals and prívate homes to be given priority. Across the country at least nine homeless people had died at press time while last Tuesday five people were found dead in a Villa Devoto house due to suspected carbon monoxide poisoning.

 

TWO FEMICIDES EVERY THREE DAYS

During the first half of the year 128 femicides were registered or a woman murdered every 34 hours, according to the lawyer Victoria Aguirre, spokesperson for the Observatorio de Mumalá monitoring this crime, while a further 505 women survived attempted femicide. Among the perpetrators, 10 percent belong to the security forces while 13 percent subsequently committed suicide with a further four percent attempting to kill themselves. Of the 128 femicides, 61 were committed in Buenos Aires Province and 14 in Santa Fe while Corrientes, San Juan, San Luis, La Pampa and Chubut were free of this crime. Aguirre complained that since Javier Milei took office, the victims have not been accompanied by government policy, recommending electronic monitor anklets and anti-panic buttons.

 

TB MAKING COMEBACK

The incidence of tuberculosis in Argentina has increased 38 percent with 3,488 new cases reported up to Easter week as against an average of 2,530 cases over the last five years. Vaccination is recognised as saving millions of lives worldwide every year.

 

RETIREMENT HOME WRISTSLAPPED

The owners and doctor of Belgrano retirement home Apart Los Incas were found guilty last Monday of the deaths of 10 pensioners during the coronavirus pandemic and given a suspended sentence of two years, as well as being banned from the care of senior citizens for the next three years (four in the case of the medical director) and ordered to pay a compensation of four million pesos per victim.

 

ROGUE PRIEST WALKS FREE

Ex-priest Justo José Ilarraz, sentenced to 25 years in prison for the abuse of minors and unfrocked by the late Pope Francis last December, was unanimously acquitted last Tuesday by the Supreme Court on the grounds that the statute of limitations had expired in his case with the offences for which he was convicted being committed between 1988 and 1992.

 

FOOTBALL CHANTS NOT KOSHER

AFA Argentine Football Association last Monday issued a communiqué repudiating anti-Semitic chants by the fans of All Boys during last Sunday’s goalless draw against Atlanta in Floresta. “That is not folklore, that is discrimination,” rapped AFA.