good morning your honors my name is michael spencer i'm representing the plaintiff with talents and they refer to them by the name of mr bugliosi i reserved three minutes for  i believe that all of your honors have been argentina by panels before there's probably nobody on the court who hasn't i guess that maybe the new member those lucky folks who are recused in any event your honors  this is not as far as i can tell a continuation of any line of cases involving the bonds this is essentially a one off case involving the tax credit program in argentina which i don't think has been litigated up here before on the other hand the underlying complaint here is a very standard plain vanilla complaint seeking to recover on the defaulted bonds similar to the bonds and there is no dispute that they did purchase and own the bonds at the beginning of the story they entered into the tax credit program which was set up in argentina both according to a presidential decree in other words law and with respect to a private trust agreement between the participants in the program including  which is a private institution which does a huge amount of business for the argentine government and those two documents the decree and the trust agreement were coordinated so that they would be consistent with one another so argentina here said that by doing that he had by putting the bonds into trust he had relinquished all interest in the ownership of the bonds similar to holder who had just sold the bonds in the market and who had exchanged them for other securities is really their argument or exchange them for of the securities yes and as you know exchanges have a history in the argentina bond cases but this is not that kind of exchange and it's not that kind of exchange the very issue is is it some kind of exchange of one security for another or is it prosecutors well that virtually everything in the documents and also in what argentina has submitted below and to this court indicate that he retained ownership laws of new york would constitute retaining an interest right if you had in some situation conveyed title to a security to a trustee who had restrictions on what the trustee could do and you were the beneficiary of the trust and retained various kinds of interests you would say the there still is at least some kind of legal interest in the security what it would be and how it would play out i guess it could be interesting depending on the terms of the trust but do you agree that whatever this is and how it should be characterized has to be determined by  declaration and some of the other materials is there enough in the record about arjen time law that allows us at this juncture to resolve that question or should we simply do we need to remain and for further exploration of arjen time long i don't think you do for several reasons one is the underlying documents pretty much speak for themselves and those documents both but isn't there a conflict between some of those documents and and the and the freest declaration i don't think so your own what are we to make of the fact that the documents that peculiar because i would have thought that in the american law analogy that i'm trying to work through in my head you wouldn't say if you gave it conveyed a bond to a trustee to administer while retaining the beneficial right to the proceeds of the the bond you wouldn't say that whatever account statement or receipt that you got from the trust company or the brokerage firm or whoever was the trustee constituted some kind of security it would be quite clear that the only security involved was the original bond but when you have a legal document that creates this program that says that the thing that you get when you turn over your security which clearly before you turn it over is a security to a trustee is another security under what under which of those two securities does the original bond holder retain a right to be paid well i think you have to look at that in context and when you look at what the c s are which as you said there's a couple of ledger pages in the records accounting records of ca and and nothing else the question then has to be is that reference  have but by and that the thing that i'm grappling with here is isn't the isn't your client taking the position in argentina precisely that he is entitle to be paid under the c c s i never took that position he took the position that it was unconstitutional for argentina to laws that prohibited him from recovering he he did say that he was entitled to recover whether it was under the cc's or because the c c s represented the b i think is not particularly clear in his arm paro papers but to me the bottom line of that is argentina has said that both the c c s and mr description of the the proceeding establishes that it's the c c's that are the payment mechanisms here not the bonds isn't that a pretty good indication that a better indication of what argentine law is then our best guess or what the interested party the attorney general has to say or what your expert has to say well we didn't have an expert we didn't know the trust law was going to be introduced as well but i mean if a court has said that the basis of payment here is appropriately the c c s and it gave him some payment did it not under this not not for a principle not i thought that there was some order of the court that some percentage  some percentage than the proceedings the court ordered security for costs and defined it as twenty five percent of some amount either way i assume that's a provisional remedy that's not something that security was based on a conclusion at least in part that he was had reasonable argument that he was entitled to be paid under the c c s not under the underlying bonds if you look at the  which is an excerpt of by argentina in the record there is nothing there that looks like a request for payment of the money judgment it was not a proceeding to recover money it was describe the fact that there is there was a lot of money involved here and he needed to be able to recover the principle on the bombs whether whether he committed to whether or not he committed is of less interest to me because i think it's i don't see anyone making an argument of judicial unstoppable or something like that but that's a less interest to me than what the court had to say about the subject and if they're giving security for costs did they say anything in your view that indicated that they were giving security because maybe the outcome of this proceeding would entitle him to money under the buns or because maybe the outcome of this proceeding would entitle him to be paid under the c c s it didn't get that far and never never came anywhere close to that and it was focused on the constitutionality of the law cla the power to do so in other words the trustee would have the power to enforce the bonds but also the freedom not  well i believe that that's correct i hope that you understand that it was exactly the provision that you're talking about that led to come to provide ratification plaintiffs here to actually bring this lawsuit so it was clearly cause view that a an action to recover the bond principle and on paper maturity interest was appropriate because they ratify institution of this action well at least that they didn't think that they had any right or interest in preventing him from doing so right but it was more than that when you look at the documents between me and where where the certified to each other what was going on there it doesn't just doesn't need to any any liability that car might incur a result of that so i believe that that certification is argentina disputes whether there was whether there was  on well whether there was such ratification is stands or falls based on the document i'm discussing and i'm confident that if you look at it and interpret it a reasonable fashion it's not what argentina says it is which is simply cause statement that it doesn't want to bring suit or doesn't have to bring suit it's a fairly full discussion saying cause not bringing suit clear on exactly what happened here the under this program in effect your client was paid interest on long the interest was credited against his taxes and whatever the terms were of those credits may be an issue but you are not seeking anything to do with unpaid interest the problem only arises when it's time to recover the principle you're right that we have very specifically not sought interest that was recompensed under the program the only footnote to that is of course when principle remains on paid after the maturity of the holder is entitled to interest postpones maturity  i would be happy to go on but if you call two  and if you look at judge press his decision relies on these three undisputed facts are undisputed issues from the plain terms of the documents in the record and said based on those facts plaintiffs no longer on the bonds and certainly observes that the plaintiff is the holder of the c c and then when ruling on whether the showing under the merits had been made by these plaintiffs and the court observes  that the case at issue involves collecting the principle of the instruments the plaintiff's own so it's it's clear from the argentine court decision that that's what's going on and if you look at percent of the principal amount of the c seats and in fact he received interim relief based on that pleading the extent to the extent that the district court reliant on argent time law is there anything beyond the attorney general's declaration that was relied upon in terms of to to in terms of argentine lawyer is a plaintiff sergeant tined lawyer and if you look at the declaration that the plaintiff submitted which mr for us replies to address is two issues this is plaintiff's declaration one what's the meaning of the trust and how the trust operate and to what happened in the empire zero proceeding and those are precisely the two issues that the attorney general replied to and so there was i don't even think you need to get to argentina as we argued because of the undisputed facts aside from argentine law but there was plenty of the in the record for the district court to rule as it did to say argentine last supported subject to this legal regime then there was a default and certain payments were deferred that those instruments those instruments have now matured and so on and that seems to be talking about the c that's correct your honor i agree with your honor that that the issue in the freest declaration that plaintiffs are discussing and judge cashman asking about has to do with the argentine trust law discussed by the attorney general which was in reply to the discussion by mr lee and about what plaintiff's lawyer believed the trust document and just just help me out a little bit with the decoupling argument is the argument that you were making  that originally the plaintiffs as a holder of the bonds was intitled to payments of interest and france appall under the bond with their coupons that were separate coupons for the interest interest is separated from the principal and represented by different instruments is that a change from what was true under the or is your decoupling argument not the decoupling of the interest payments from  the documents entitling the party to interest payments from the document requiring repayment of the principle but rather is a decoupling just of interest remaining in the principal remaining matched what was originally under the body of the plaintiff started using the c c s and in fact used them all up there's no more of a linkage between the original not been a default had there not been the law's deferring payment what instrument would have to be presented in order to get payment on the princip on in two thousand and five in two thousand and twelve there were similarly situated c c holders who had used up some of their c c s or all of them there was a procedure  s and presented that with the c c's and receive the bond back but that has not occurred here and so the trust has not been terminated and the bones just don't trust and i ask you just a follow up to my earlier question about the reliance on the attorney general's declaration and given that aren't is a party to the litigation doesn't that suggest that even though there should be respectful consideration i think the term is that we should be cautious in how we as a court rely on that there's a language in animal science product supreme court decision in two thousand and eighteen which says that when a foreign government offers an account in the context of litigation there may be cause for caution argument plaintiffs are the ones who originally raised argentine law in their complaint given the status of c c holders the republic raised the fact that entire regime was governed by argentine law which is court has any questions would rest on our arguments and papers thank you thank you  i'd like to suggest to your honor's that the frost terminations provisions both in the trust agreement and in the relevant presidential decree are inconsistent with the idea that under certain circumstances the trust would be terminated and the bonds would be returned to you with respect to the trust agreement  in the decree which is article five page eight hundred and twenty nine dollars says depositors shall be able to withdraw at any time but only once the public debt securities so what that means and when this was set up the c c's in the c c f s were present from the outset so everyone knew that they were there and it would make no sense to have these determinations visions in both the decree and the trust agreement which provide for return of the bar to cooley ot if in fact all of the rights of indicates strongly and argentina's position that those terminations provisions could operate only prior to the st use of any c does not appear anywhere in these documents and would be ridiculous because the st c c f was used within a couple of months of when this whole program started that was the whole point so  it just makes no practical sense to interpret these provisions that i've just read to you in any way other than the bombs remain in trust me after the f process was done in other words throughout the maturity years of the bombs what was left what was left was a obligation of argentina to repay principal and an obligation to pay interest on that principle which incidentally is not reflected in any of the tax credit program documents so are they saying that mr bugliosi at the start by signing these documents gave up the right to get that it is much more inherently reasonable to interpret these documents in context to provide that