NatWest is facing a $1.1 billion damages claim from Tandanor, a shipyard in Buenos Aires, over alleged fraudulent conduct during its privatisation in 1991, the bank has disclosed in its half-year results.
The FTSE 100 bank said the claim, first filed in 2012, sought unquantified damages until December, when the claimants filed an update putting the figure at $1.1 billion.
The case relates to the sale of the state-owned shipyard under Argentina’s then-president Carlos Menem in the early 1990s.
According to NatWest, the claim was brought by Tandanor against what is now known as the “representative office” of the Royal Bank of Scotland Argentine branch and 11 private individuals. The bank said the representative office, which is in liquidation, had a 2.9 per cent “participation” in the privatisation.
The representative office inherited the claim from Banco Holandés Unido, a bank that formed part of the Dutch group ABN Amro and was bought by RBS in 2007. The Argentine ministry of defence joined Tandanor’s claim in 2014.
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