Alejandro Fargosi is not just another name on the list of national deputies: he is the visible thread of a plot where million-dollar lawsuits against the State intersect with the politics that claims to speak on behalf of that same State. According to reportsminutouno.com in an article dated March 26, 2026, he was presented as “the lawyer of the vulture fund Burford Capital that Milei appointed as a deputy” for having represented that fund in key litigations against Argentina (“Alejandro Fargosi, the lawyer of the vulture fund”). For years, his firm was part of legal operations that transformed public policy decisions –like the re-nationalization of Aerolíneas Argentinas or the renationalization of YPF– into business opportunities for a global vulture fund, as political and economic chronicles published between 2017 and 2026 describe (IISD; “Alejandro Fargosi, the lawyer of the vulture fund”). Today, sitting in a seat for La Libertad Avanza, Fargosi embodies an uncomfortable question: what happens when those who learned to make the State a profitable debtor occupy the place of those who should protect it.
Aerolíneas: when re-nationalization becomes business
The first major chapter is Aerolíneas Argentinas. In 2008, the Government decided to re-nationalize the company, then in the hands of the Marsans Group, amid a business crisis and a strong political dispute over the fate of the flag airline, as reported by Investment Treaty News (IISD) on November 29, 2008 (“Argentina Moves to Expropriate Airline”). Marsans responded with an international lawsuit: in 2009 they initiated the arbitration Teinver S.A., Transportes de Cercanías S.A. and Autobuses Urbanos del Sur S.A. v. Argentine Republic before the ICSID (ARB/09/1 case), claiming compensation for the expropriation, as recorded in UNCTAD and ICSID records (“Teinver and Others v. Argentina,” UNCTAD; Teinver and Others v. Argentina (ICSID Case No. ARB/09/1)).
In September 2017, Investment Treaty News reported that the ICSID tribunal condemned Argentina to pay more than 320 million dollars for the expropriation of Aerolíneas, plus interest and part of the costs (“Argentina Ordered to Pay”). The same ruling and its foundations can be read in the official ICSID document published in 2017 (Teinver and Others v. Argentina (ICSID Case No. ARB/09/1)). From there, the country tried to annul or reduce the ruling, but the subsequent decisions upheld the payment obligation, consolidating the adverse result for Argentina.
In this context, Burford Capital appears. According to the analysis by IISD and the timeline collected in UNCTAD, the fund acquired in Spain the litigation rights related to Marsans, assuming the cost of the dispute in exchange for a substantial part of any amount that could be collected from Argentina (“Argentina Ordered to Pay”; “Teinver and Others v. Argentina,” UNCTAD). The specialized press later noted that the ruling became a remarkable business: Burford estimated a profit of around 140 million dollars when the credit was sold and finally collected by Titan Consortium, the vehicle that bought the ruling (“Abogado macrista litigó”).
In December 2024, CIAR Global reported that a judge from the United States ordered the execution of the ruling in favor of Titan for approximately 390.9 million dollars, confirming that the ICSID ruling translated into an effective payment that included interest (“Jueza estadounidense ejecuta”). A note republished by bilaterals.org in August 2024 complemented that data by detailing that the U.S. justice system forced Argentina to face the payment of the ruling in the context of the Aerolíneas case (“La Justicia de EEUU ordenó al país que pague US$340 millones”).
The local political dimension becomes clear when observing who participated in the legal assembly. An article from bilaterals.org dated October 23, 2025, which draws information from Argentine media, states that the firm of Diego and Alejandro Fargosi was involved in the strategy that led to that outcome and ended up receiving fees paid by the State (“Abogado macrista litigó”). In the same vein, the portal En Orsai described Fargosi as “the candidate who caused the country to lose 400 million dollars” due to his professional role in the Aerolíneas case, highlighting the paradox that someone who litigated against the State later ran for a position to represent it (“Fargosi: El candidato que hizo perder al país 400 millones de dólares”). The image is striking: the country loses a lawsuit and, with the same public purse, pays the bill of the ruling and the one for the lawyers who worked for the other side.
YPF: the bet of 16.1 billion that collapsed
The other major front for Burford against Argentina was YPF. In 2012, Congress declared 51% of the oil company's capital to be of public utility and expropriated the shares held by Repsol, while Petersen companies –which owned about 25%– ended up bankrupt. The timeline prepared by the Buenos Aires Herald in July 2025 explains that, after that crisis, Burford bought the litigation rights of Petersen and later also those of Eton Park, retaining the ability to sue Argentina over how the renationalization was carried out (“YPF Case: Timeline of Events since Preska Order”).
The case was processed for years in the Southern District Court of New York. According to that same timeline, in September 2023, Judge Loretta Preska issued a first-instance ruling that set compensation of 16.1 billion dollars against Argentina, considering that the State violated the rules of the YPF statute by not launching a public acquisition offer for the remaining shares when it decided to expropriate the Repsol package (“YPF Case: Timeline of Events since Preska Order”). For Burford, the scenario seemed perfect: a gigantic ruling that confirmed the business model of financing lawsuits against sovereign States.
However, on March 27, 2026, Reuters reported that the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan majority reversed Preska’s ruling and annulled the 16.1 billion, concluding that breach of contract claims failed as a matter of Argentine law (“US Appeals Court Voids $16.1 Billion Judgment against Argentina over YPF Seizure”). The same report was reproduced by WHTC/Thomson Reuters, highlighting that Burford's shares fell around 40% following the ruling (“US Appeals Court Voids $16.1 Billion Judgment against Argentina over YPF Seizure”). Shortly before, the fund itself had issued a statement through PR Newswire acknowledging the negative impact of the decision on its position in the case (“Statement Re YPF Appeal Decision”).
The Buenos Aires Herald also explained, in a parallel note dated July 15, 2025, the reasons why the U.S. government had expressed strong support for Argentina's position in the case, highlighting the geopolitical and economic relevance of the case (“YPF Case: The US Government’s Reasons for Expressing Its Resounding Support for Argentina”). That international context reinforces the idea that the YPF trial was more than a commercial conflict: it was a scenario where finance, energy, and sovereignty intersected.
Amid that judicial and diplomatic upheaval, the Argentine press once again focused on Fargosi. The aforementioned note from minutouno.com, along with articles on critical portals like En Orsai, presented him as “the lawyer of the vulture fund” who had advised Burford in lawsuits against the State and who now held a key role in the Chamber of Deputies (“Alejandro Fargosi, el abogado del fondo buitre”; “Fargosi: El candidato que hizo perder al país 400 millones de dólares”). For any citizen looking from the outside, it's hard not to see a single thread: that of a professional who smoothly navigates between the courts where billions are contested and the chamber where the rules of the game are defined.
Public ethics, revolving doors, and political representation
When these elements are lined up, the problem ceases to be exclusively legal and becomes intimately political. The combination of the ICSID ruling, enforcement in foreign courts, and subsequent parliamentary representation is not a hypothesis, but a sequence documented by international organizations, economic media, and political portals (Teinver and Others v. Argentina (ICSID Case No. ARB/09/1); “Argentina Ordered to Pay”; “US Appeals Court Voids $16.1 Billion Judgment against Argentina over YPF Seizure”; “Alejandro Fargosi, el abogado del fondo buitre”).
The same actor –or, more precisely, the same firm– participates in the assembly of international litigations that end up forcing the State to pay hundreds of millions of dollars and, shortly afterward, one of its partners sits in a congressional seat discussing economic and institutional reforms on behalf of the citizenry.
It is not about denying that lawyers should charge fees for their work or that States can lose lawsuits when they have violated laws or treaties, something that the chronicles of the Aerolíneas case clearly highlight (“Argentina Ordered to Pay”). The point is another: the normalization of a model where law ceases to be a language of shared rights and obligations and becomes a sophisticated tool for extracting public resources, put at the service of global financial funds and a very small legal elite (“Abogado macrista litigó”; “YPF Case: Timeline of Events since Preska Order”). When that same elite jumps into politics, the question stops being technical and becomes profoundly human: who is really sitting in the chamber, the representative of a people who pays taxes or the lawyer of a fund that learned to turn the State into a stable source of income (“Alejandro Fargosi, el abogado del fondo buitre”).
In the case of La Libertad Avanza, the paradox becomes particularly visible. The official narrative presents itself as a crusade against the political "caste" and the "looting of the State," but at the same time incorporates into its ranks lawyers who have made that same State a profitable object of judicial dispute for high-profile clients (“Alejandro Fargosi, el abogado del fondo buitre”).
Fargosi embodies that crossing: he is simultaneously the “macrista lawyer” who litigated against Argentina for Aerolíneas, as highlighted by bilaterals.org and En Orsai in 2025, and the libertarian deputy who today sits to vote on the country's direction (“Abogado macrista litigó”; “Fargosi: El candidato que hizo perder al país 400 millones de dólares”). For any citizen looking at the ballot, this double professional and political life is not a technicality: it is a fact that questions the basic trust in those who make decisions in their name.
From a public ethics perspective, the case invites a close examination of the rules of transparency, incompatibilities, and conflict of interest. Not only to judge individual conduct but to discuss whether we want the same actors who design strategies to make the State lose multimillion-dollar lawsuits to have the power to set, from within, the rules that will then make those litigations possible –or not– (“El abogado del fondo buitre en contra de YPF”; “Argentina Ordered to Pay”). Aerolíneas and YPF, in that sense, are much more than two noisy cases: they are mirrors reflecting what place we give, as a society, to the defense of the public interest against the logic of litigation funds and their local partners (“YPF Case: Timeline of Events since Preska Order”).
Thus, the conclusion is not a simple closure formula, but a call to face something that often remains hidden behind legal technicalities. Every dollar that leaves the State in a ruling or in an agreement is not an abstraction: it is money that stops going to salaries, pensions, schools, hospitals, as notes that account for the amounts of Aerolíneas and YPF more or less explicitly recall (“Argentina Ordered to Pay”; “US Appeals Court Voids $16.1 Billion Judgment against Argentina over YPF Seizure”). The fact that those who helped maximize those collections later sit in the seats where the future of that same State is decided should at least trigger an alarm.
The situation of a lawyer who first litigates against the State and then enters politics to represent that same State poses a conflict of interest of enormous ethical gravity. It is not just a change of role; it is the coexistence of two potentially incompatible loyalties: on one hand, the professional obligation to maximize the benefit of private clients seeking to obtain large sums of money from the public coffers; on the other, the duty to protect the general interest and the property of the citizenry from an elected position.
When the same person designs strategies to legally weaken the State at one stage and, in the next, participates in the drafting of laws and policies that may facilitate or hinder new claims, the line between public service and private business becomes dangerously blurred. Even if everything is formally legal, the social perception of the capture of the State by private interests erodes democratic trust: the citizenry has the right to wonder whether their representatives are working for those who vote for them or for those who already paid them fees.
Not to demonize professions or prohibit trajectories, but to remember that democracy suffers when conflicts of interest cease to be the exception and become the usual way of doing politics.
Si algo muestran los casos Aerolíneas y YPF es que, detrás de cada expediente y cada laudo, siempre hay una pregunta que nos involucra a todos: quién gana, quién pierde y quién habla realmente en nuestro nombre cuando se apaga la cámara y empieza la negociación real.
References
“Macrista lawyer litigated against Argentina for Aerolíneas causing it to lose a 400 million judgment.” bilaterals.org, 23 Oct. 2025, https://www.bilaterals.org/?abogado-macrista-litigo-contra-la.
“Alejandro Fargosi, the lawyer of the vulture fund Burford Capital that Milei appointed as deputy.” minutouno.com, 26 Mar. 2026, https://www.minutouno.com/politica/alejandro-fargosi-el-abogado-del-fondo-buitre-burford-capital-que-milei-puso-como-diputado-n1267890
.“Argentina Moves to Expropriate Airline under Threat of US$1 Billion Arbitration Claim.” Investment Treaty News (IISD), 29 Nov. 2008.
Burford Capital. “Statement Re YPF Appeal Decision.” PR Newswire, 26 Mar. 2026.
“Fargosi: The candidate who made the country lose 400 million dollars.” In Orsai, 21 Oct. 2025.
“US judge executes ruling of Aerolíneas Argentinas.” CIAR Global, 11 Dec. 2024, https://ciarglobal.com/jueza-estadounidense-ejecuta-laudo-de-aerolineas-argentinas/.
“The US Justice ordered the country to pay US$340 million for the Aerolíneas case.” bilaterals.org, 19 Aug. 2024, https://isds.bilaterals.org/?la-justicia-de-eeuu-ordeno-al-pais.
Teinver and Others v. Argentina (ICSID Case No. ARB/09/1). International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), 2017,
http://icsidfiles.worldbank.org/icsid/ICSIDBLOBS/OnlineAwards/C520/DS12192_En.pdf.
“Teinver and Others v. Argentina.” UNCTAD Investment Dispute Settlement Navigator, 15 Jan. 2026, https://investmentpolicy.unctad.org/investment-dispute-settlement/cases/335/teinver-and-others-v-argentina.
“US Appeals Court Voids $16.1 Billion Judgment against Argentina over YPF Seizure.” Reuters, 27 Mar. 2026.
“US Appeals Court Voids $16.1 Billion Judgment against Argentina over YPF Seizure.” WHTC / Thomson Reuters, 27 Mar. 2026.
“YPF Case: Timeline of Events since Preska Order.” Buenos Aires Herald, 15 July 2025, https://buenosairesherald.com/business/ypf-case-timeline-of-events-since-preska-order.
“YPF Case: The US Government’s Reasons for Expressing Its Resounding Support for Argentina.” Buenos Aires Herald, 15 July 2025.
About the Author:
William L. Acosta is a graduate of PWU and Alliance University. He is a
retired police officer from the New York Police Department, a former US Army
military as well as founder and CEO of Equalizer Private Investigations &
Security Services Inc., a licensed agency in New York and Florida, with
international projection. Since 1999, he has led investigations in narcotics,
homicides, and missing persons cases, as well as participating in criminal
defense at the state and federal level. A specialist in international and
multijurisdictional cases, he has coordinated operations in North America,
Europe, and America.
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