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Les fonds vautours

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With this new development, targeting payment ﬂows has become more difﬁcult for sovereign debt creditors. This may explain why creditors considered with renewed attention other strategies, such as attaching central bank assets.

3) The Fortress around Central Bank Assets
Finally, a word should be said about the attempts by creditors to enforce their claims on central bank assets. Sovereign creditors have long targeted assets of state entities, such as central banks. Litigation against central banks is in fact a classic tool of international creditors. Creditors have faced an uphill battle in this war. Central banks can indeed rely on two potent arguments to fend off attacks by creditors: in the ﬁrst place, a central bank may argue that it is a separate entity, whose assets are independent from that of the state itself. Before reaching the assets held by central banks, creditors must therefore show that there are convincing reasons to disregard the independent legal status of the bank. Even if a creditor succeeds in demonstrating that the corporate veil should be pierced and that the central bank should hence be held liable for the engagement of the State, it remains that central bank assets beneﬁt in many legal systems from a speciﬁc immunity. 179 The ﬁrst obstacle has proven difﬁcult for creditors to bypass. In many instances, courts have not been satisﬁed that the presumption of independent legal status should be overturned. In a case brought against Nicaragua, a US District Court held that the central bank was only responsible for its own debts, not for the debts of the sovereign. Creditors could therefore only attach assets held in the name of the central bank that actually belong to the sovereign. 180 In a case involving Argentina which has already been mentioned, the Second Circuit Court likewise rejected an attempt by creditor to attach an account of Argentina’s central bank held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, even though the creditors
account concerning cash, shall not be subject to attachment, receivership or blocking in any way, by a participant (other than the operator or the settlement organization), a counterparty or a third party”. The French text reads as follows: “Tout compte de règlement sur espèces auprès d’un organisme gestionnaire ou d’un agent de règlement d’un système, (, de même que tout transfert de sommes, via un établissement de crédit de droit belge ou étranger, à porter à un tel compte de règlement sur espèces,) ne peut être saisi, mis sous séquestre ou bloqué d’une manière quelconque par un participant (autre que l’organisme gestionnaire ou l’agent de règlement), une contrepartie ou un tiers.” 179. On the immunity enjoyed by central banks in general, see CH. PROCTOR, “Central Banks and Sovereign Immunity,” Butterworths J. Int’l. Banking and Financial L., vol. 15, issue 3, pp. 70-78 (2000); L. PAUL LEE, “Central Banks and Sovereign Immunity,” Columbia J. Transnational L., vol. 41/2, pp.327-396 (2003) and B. KRAUSKOPF and C. STEVEN, “Immunität ausländischer Zentralbanken im deutschen Recht,” Wertpapier-Mitteilungen, vol. 6, pp. 269-279 (2000). 180. LNC Investments, Inc. v. Republic of Nicaragua, 115 F. Supp. 2d 358 (S.D.N.Y. 2000), aff’d 228 F.3d 423 (2d Cir. 2000).

Droit des affaires - Insolvabilité des États et dettes souveraines -1

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