These are the social reasons of the businesses that asked BANADE for loans they never finished paying, if they even started, or ever intended to. The liquidation of the National Bank of Development during the government of Carlos Menem facilitated things things for them. Gaglianone Establecimiento Gráfico SACI is currently the recovered business Chilavert Graphic Arts Worker Cooperative, Ltd., while Electrodomésticos Aurora SA was rebaptized by the workers as Renacer [Rebirth] Worker Cooperative, Ltd. With the exception of Sasetru, all the others are also worker cooperatives today, but their names retain some reference to the fantasy name used by the bosses, and are found scattered around the country, in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires and in the provinces of Buenos Aires, Neuquén, and Tierra del Fuego.
Apart from the amounts involved in the case of Sasetru (a gigantic enterprise in the food industry, which was able to become one of the main exporters in the country), the Iurcovich family is the biggest debtor to BANADE, as a result of the loan it managed to get through EAM 78 to finance 79% of the construction of the hotel. The origin of that debt was a loan of eight million pesos. The workers calculated that, by 2012, with the interest updated, it represented some 170 million pesos.1
The operation, initiated by the contract signed November 30, 1976, was carried out under Circular VI.2.158, a set of ad hoc rules designed by the BANADE. The judge, in the judgment that ruled in favor of the former owners, summarized it as follows:
Loans were designed with exceptionally benign conditions, which is to say, structured with the specific and declared end of serving the promotion of the construction of hotels in the Federal Capital, Mendoza, and Rosario for the XI World Championship of Soccer. That’s why these promotional loans were subject to special regulations (Circular VI.2.158), which adopted as a base of adjustment of capital the variation of the stock quote of the Adjustable National Values; a variation that, as was pointed out, in consideration X of this vote, was far lower than the evolution of wholesale prices.2
That is, the project under which the loan was conceived of anticipated a scenario of decreasing inflation, which was very different from what really took place.
Indeed, the growing inflation of early of the ’80s led BANADE to enforce indexing regimes that would favor it, to try preserve its assets.
- Manuel Alfieri, “Those asking for the eviction of the Bauen owe the State $170 million” in Tiempo Argentina, 21 October, 2012, pp. 24-25.↩
- CNCyCom, Room II, “Bauen SACIC vs. National Bank of Development re fulfillment of credit obligation,” case 8641/IV, fs. 2997, April 1997, ruling of judge Eduardo Vocos Conesa, which adheres judge Marina Mariani de Vidal upholds.↩