International Call to Support and Internationalize the Belgian Law on Vulture Funds
23 February 2017 by Collective
On 12 July 2015, the Belgian Parliament passed a law to prevent ‘vulture funds’ from making huge profits out of financial crises. The law limits the ability of creditors to pursue claims before its courts that are manifestly disproportional to the amount they paid for the debt.
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Vulture funds
Vulture funds
Vulture fund
Investment funds who buy, on the secondary markets and at a significant discount, bonds once emitted by countries that are having repayment difficulties, from investors who prefer to cut their losses and take what price they can get in order to unload the risk from their books. The Vulture Funds then pursue the issuing country for the full amount of the debt they have purchased, not hesitating to seek decisions before, usually, British or US courts where the law is favourable to creditors.
buy public debt from insolvent States at a huge discount, deliberately refuse to participate in debt restructuring efforts, and later try to make profits by suing the debtor States for full repayment of the nominal value of the debt and its interest
Interest
An amount paid in remuneration of an investment or received by a lender. Interest is calculated on the amount of the capital invested or borrowed, the duration of the operation and the rate that has been set.
. As the UN Independent Expert on debt and human rights stated: “vulture fund litigation has come at a significant cost for some States, diverting public funds into questionable forms of debt service
Debt service
The sum of the interests and the amortization of the capital borrowed.
, which should better be used for fighting poverty, improving public health care or education, and boost the debtors’ economies”. The profits they obtain are exorbitant: “vulture funds have achieved, on average, recovery rates of some 3 to 20 times their investment, equivalent to returns of 300 to 2,000 per cent.”
The Belgian law implements a key recommendation contained in a resolution of the UN Human Rights Council, which “called upon States to consider implementing legal frameworks curtailing predatory vulture fund activities within their jurisdictions” [1]. But it is currently being challenged by a Cayman Islands-based hedge fund, NML Capital Ltd. (a subsidiary of Elliott Management Corporation funded by the billionaire Paul Singer), before the Constitutional Court of Belgium. This vulture fund is one of the most infamous in the world. It lately won the so-called “trial of the century” in sovereign debt Sovereign debt Government debts or debts guaranteed by the government. against Argentina in New York. Now it is asking the Belgian Constitutional Court to cancel the Belgian Law. Its aim is to dissuade other States from adopting similar regulations on vulture funds.
We support the Belgian Law on vulture funds and call on other States to adopt similar legislation in order to stop these speculators making huge profits off the back of the ordinary people around the world.
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Footnotes
[1] Check the UN Human Rights Council resolution 27/30 from 26 September 2014: www.undocs.org/A/HRC/RES/27/30
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CADTM
COMMITTEE FOR THE ABOLITION OF ILLEGITIMATE DEBT
35 rue Fabry
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00324 226 62 85
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