Description

Here's another short write up. 

You are going to need google translate if you don't read spanish. 

Pampa energia is a large energy producer in Argentina that is about to get skewered because of the Lava Jato investigations in Brazil.

1) As a primer, PAM bought Petrobras's assets in Argentina.

http://www.ambito.com/848745-pampa-energia-oficializo-compra-de-petrobras-argentina

You can be absolutely sure that there is no way that this deal got done without a massive amount of corruption and in particular because it involved Argentines and Brazilians during the populist administrations of Dilma / Cristina. The bribe triangle involved the administrations of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Venezuela hiding and generating bribes for each other in outside jurisdictions so that it would not fall for the domestic justice system to investigate. If you look at the purchase price of the transaction you will notice that it was substantially below value.

2) Most recently PAM's main shareholders independently of PAM bought the assets of Angelo Calcaterra, the cousin of the president of Argentina who was involved in the construction business in Argentina as the partner of............................................ some of you may have guessed it........ coming coming ....

ODERBRECHT!

the owner of which is in jail for admitting to billions of dollars in bribes and as Oderbrech is a huge multinational and Brazil is next to Argentina you can see where this goes and went.  

http://www.thebubble.com/odebrecht-admits-to-paying-us-35-million-in-bribes-in-argentina/

https://infoensenadadiario.blogspot.com/2017/02/el-correo-de-odebrecht-involucra.html

This last transaction was done to pretend that the administration was not doing business with family members.... 

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1995087-calcaterra-vendio-su-empresa-a-cuatro-socios-de-pampa-energia

The President, his cousin and the main argentine shareholder of PAM have recently been accused in a criminal investigation by an Argentine congresswoman associated with the Kirchners

https://www.taringa.net/posts/noticias/19884504/Odebrecht-Macri-su-primo-Calcaterra-y-Mindlin-denunciados.html

https://www.taringa.net/posts/offtopic/19860533/Denuncio-penalmente-a-Macri-Lewis-y-Mindlin.html

Since mid term elections are coming up in Argentina in October the president is working like crazy to keep the judiciary in check to not have a mess like they had in Brazil bubble up, but it is going to be very very difficult to contain. There were a lot of deals between Argentina and Brazil and Pampa and its large argentine shareholder is in the MIDDLE of the whole mess. Pampa has run up like crazy because everybody realized that they bought a highly undervalued asset and then you tack on the Vaca Muerta nonesense and it looks like a great story except that the story is great precisely because the argentine owners are involved in these messes such as being the buyer of the president's cousin's business so that the administration can pretend that it has no conflicts of interest. 

Unlike JBS and Odebrecht PAM trades in the US which is going to give the SEC a nice incentive to investigate this mess here rather than in the nonesense jurisdictions of Latin America. 

I am short and will be getting shorter or covering or doing whatever I want with my position. 

Catalyst

Expansion of Lava Jato investigation to Argentine judiciary. 

While ordinarily an investigation into this sort of thing would take years to do or never happen in Latin America, the Brazilian revelations as well as the close relatioship between Dilma and Cristina as well as the upcoming Argentine elections should collude to put PAM right in the cross hairs of an eager Argentine judge.