NEW YORK - Argentina told a US court Friday that it had finally paid the so-called "vulture funds" that had been battling the country for a decade over billions of dollars in defaulted bonds.
"The Republic has made full payment in accordance with the specific terms of each such agreement" with holdout bondholders who had successfully sued Argentina, the country's lawyer said in a statement to a US court
"The Republic has made full payment in accordance with the specific terms of each such agreement" with holdout bondholders who had successfully sued the country, Argentina's lawyer said in a statement to the court.
The move comes after Buenos Aires raised $16.5 billion in a momentous return to international credit markets, with most of the proceeds for repaying the holdouts.
Paying off especially New York hedge funds NML Capital, a unit of multi-billionaire Paul Singer's Elliott Management, and Aurelius Capital Management, which led the lawsuits against the country, will bring to a close a long drama that had hurt the Argentine economy.
The case also raised crucial questions about contracts and the rights of both borrowers and lenders in the massive global sovereign debt markets.
The payments concluded a delicate legal and financial dance that required creditors to trust that they would be paid by the new Argentine government of President Mauricio Macri according to settlements negotiated in February.
The creditors were mistrustful after Macri's predecessor Cristina Kirchner had for years refused to deal with them.
The conflict dates back to 2001, when Argentina defaulted on nearly $100 billion in debt. Nearly all the country's creditors eventually accepted to write off 70 percent of their bonds in a restructuring that was meant to allow the country to get back on its feet.
But seven percent of the creditors, the so-called holdouts, refused. NML and Aurelius, which have pioneered the business of buying up cheap defaulted sovereign bonds and suing for full payment, led the campaign in a New York court to gain full repayment.
Although Judge Thomas Griesa ruled in the hedge funds' favor in 2012, Kirchner refused to pay, arguing it was unfair to the majority of creditors who joined the restructuring.
Kirchner famously labelled the hedge funds "vultures" for buying up the defaulted bonds on the cheap intending to sue for 100 percent payment whatever other creditors did.