Opinion ID: 796447
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Control Over the FRBNY Funds

Text: 33 Plaintiffs' arguments concerning ownership of, and control over, the FRBNY Funds are not supported by the Decrees. The record is barren of any evidence that ownership or control over the FRBNY Funds was transferred to the Republic upon issuance of the Decrees, or that the Decrees required BCRA to use the FRBNY Funds, as opposed to other reserves, to repay the IMF. Rather than transferring funds to the Republic from BCRA, the Decrees and Resolution No. 49 directed BCRA to make reserves available to repay the IMF, and then to repay the IMF using those funds, leaving the decision of which specific funds would be used to BCRA's discretion. See, e.g., Reply Br. of Appellant NML 13-14 n. 9 (acknowledging that the Decrees fail to specify particular assets as Unrestricted Reserves). 34 While the Decrees may have manifested the Republic's ability and willingness to control BCRA, and to direct BCRA to use its assets for the benefit of the Republic, they did not cause control of BCRA's assets to change from BCRA to the Republic. To conclude otherwise would be to allow creditors of a foreign state to attach all of the assets of the state's central bank any time the foreign state issues directives affecting the central bank's reserves. 12 Corporate law principles, which apply by analogy to the relationship between the Republic and its instrumentality BCRA, see, e.g., First Nat'l City Bank v. Banco Para El Comercio Exterior de Cuba, 462 U.S. 611, 628-33, 103 S.Ct. 2591, 77 L.Ed.2d 46 (1983) ( Banco ) (applying corporate law principles to determine circumstances under which separate juridical status of government instrumentality must be disregarded), support this conclusion. See Dole Food Co. v. Patrickson, 538 U.S. 468, 475-76, 123 S.Ct. 1655, 155 L.Ed.2d 643 (2003) (holding that the FSIA did not affect underlying corporate law principles, and stating that [a] corporate parent which owns the shares of a subsidiary does not, for that reason alone, own or have legal title to the assets of the subsidiary.... The fact that the shareholder is a foreign state does not change the analysis. (citations omitted)); United States v. Wallach, 935 F.2d 445, 462 (2d Cir.1991) ([S]hareholders do not hold legal title to any of the corporation's assets. Instead, the corporation—the entity itself—is vested with the title. (citations omitted)); see also 1 William Meade Fletcher, Cyclopedia of the Law of Corporations § 31 at 78, 84 (rev. ed. 2006) (Shareholders, even the controlling shareholder, cannot transfer or assign the corporation's properties and rights, nor apply corporate funds to personal debts or objects .... (footnotes omitted)). 13