The text
The unified bill incorporated elements of the prior versions, combining them into a single text. Outside the rigorous formalities, the substantive points of the bill which, the following year, the Senate would turn into Law 27344 and which president Macri would veto shortly thereafter, are the following:
Art. 1) The properties and all the facilities that make up the building of the Hotel Bauen are declared to be of public utility and subject to expropriation (…).
Art. 2) The following are declared to be of public utility and subject to expropriation: all tangible and intangible goods, included brands and patents, that are related to tourist, social, and community use carried out on the property (…), with the exclusion of those that may have been acquired (…) by the cooperative (…).
Art. 3) For the purposes of the corresponding severance (…) the valuation will be determined on the basis of the general state of the expropriated goods (…) as of 20 March 2003.
The key article is the one that describes how the severance and the amount to finally be paid to the State for expropriation will be calculated, because this is related to the history of the Iurcoviches’ business, does justice to the situation of the co-op’s origin, and denies the myth, propagated by Macri supporters and the former bosses, that expropriating the BAUEN “is a lot of money.”
Art. 4) The sum that must eventually be paid in fulfillment of the expropriation process will be cancelled totally or partly, according to the corresponding rate, with the credits that the national State posseses against the owner and/or the owners of the goods declared to be of public utility and subject to expropriation, affected by the regime of the property right of mortgage, in virtue of the loans contractedopportunely with the former National Bank of Development (BANADE), as well as with any other enforceable debt (…) against the owners of the goods, whatever its origin.
In other words, the law anticipates paying the mandatory severance to execute the expropriation with the debts that the Iurcoviches have to the State, principally, but not exclusively, to the BANADE, once they can be determined. The supposed $30 million that must be paid, and which the media favorable to the bosses wielded, are not in the body of the law.