Table of Contents: I. Introduction. II. Direct Contracting under the Santa Fe Public Works Law. III. Principles of Public Procurement. IV. Urgency as Grounds for Direct Contracting. The Principles of Good Governance and Transparency as Rules Governing Selection Mechanisms. V. The Recent Experience of Rosario International Airport. Direct Contracting with Mitigated Competitive Participation. VI. Doctrinal Significance of the Case. VII. Conclusions.

By Pablo A. Franchi (*) and Lisandro E. Castagno ()**

Abstract

This paper analyzes the legal framework governing direct contracting in the field of public works in the Province of Santa Fe, in light of Law No. 5,188, as amended, and its implementing regulations. It also examines the structural principles governing public procurement—legality, participation, equality, transparency, and reasonableness—and their application to exceptional procedures for the selection of contractors. Furthermore, it addresses the concept of public urgency as a legal basis for direct contracting and analyzes the experience involving the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the runway at Rosario International Airport “Islas Malvinas” as an example of the implementation of this legal mechanism.

I. INTRODUCTION

The legal framework governing public works constitutes one of the most relevant areas of administrative law and, particularly, of administrative contracting, insofar as it is directly connected with the management of essential infrastructure for the economic, productive, and social development of a given community.

In the Province of Santa Fe, this framework is structured primarily on the basis of Law No. 5,188 on Public Works, as amended, and its Regulatory Decree No. 0822/61 (Official Gazette, March 21, 1961), together with subsequent amendments. This body of legislation establishes the procedures, principles, and guarantees governing administrative contracting for the execution of works in the public interest.

Within this regulatory system, public tendering constitutes the ordinary procedure for selecting the State’s contractor. As Miguel S. Marienhoff explains, public tendering is the standard mechanism through which the Administration seeks to obtain the best contractual conditions in the public interest, by means of competitive participation among interested parties.

However, the legal system itself recognizes the existence of exceptional circumstances that justify the use of more expeditious contracting procedures. Among these is direct contracting, a mechanism that makes it possible to dispense with the tendering procedure when particular circumstances—such as urgency or the impossibility of postponement—render a tender inconvenient or impossible.

The analysis of this contracting mechanism is particularly relevant in the contemporary context of public management, characterized by the need to reconcile administrative legality with effectiveness in the implementation of public policies and strategic infrastructure projects for the advancement of society.

II. DIRECT CONTRACTING UNDER THE SANTA FE PUBLIC WORKS LAW

Law No. 5,188, as amended, establishes as a general rule that public works must be awarded through public tendering. Specifically, the law refers to procedures for selecting private contracting parties as methods of award, giving priority to that mechanism (Article 20(1) and related provisions).

This principle responds to the need to ensure competition among bidders and to ensure that the State obtains the offer most advantageous to the public interest.

Nevertheless, the regulatory framework itself provides for the possibility of resorting to exceptional contracting mechanisms, including direct contracting.

This mechanism constitutes an exceptional procedure justified when reasons of public interest render the use of ordinary competitive mechanisms—public or private tendering—inconvenient or impossible.

Direct contracting does not constitute an exception to the principles of administrative law, but rather a procedural adaptation to specific circumstances requiring a faster and more agile response from the State.

Accordingly, even in such cases, principles such as legality, reasonableness, transparency, and equality among bidders must be preserved.

We are therefore not dealing with an area of absolute administrative discretion, as is often erroneously claimed regarding direct contracting. Such a conception is incompatible with the rule of law, under which all administrative action is legally constrained. Even where the legal system grants a margin of appreciation, such discretion always operates within a framework of regulated discretion, subject to rules, principles, and controls. Consequently, failure to comply with such requirements renders the procedure invalid and constitutes a case of manifest arbitrariness.

Thus, direct contracting is not removed from the general framework governing public procurement. Rather, its validity—regardless of the legal grounds invoked to justify it—depends upon full compliance with the principles structuring the State’s contractual activity.

It must be made clear that the principles of transparency and efficiency are not mutually exclusive or contradictory. Rather, in modern public procurement, with the numerous technological tools available to public officials, efficiency has acquired a more prominent role—perhaps one it did not enjoy in the past—because it enables public purposes, which constitute the primary objective of all State activity, to be achieved more rapidly.

It is also important to emphasize that, in this type of procedure for selecting a private contracting party, the Administration must still assess the offer—or the offers, in the case of an abbreviated competitive process. Accordingly, the contractor is not selected merely at the whim of the official in charge. On the contrary, a comprehensive analysis must precede the award, supported by technical reports that enjoy a presumption of validity and deserve full evidentiary weight provided that they satisfy the requirements of seriousness, precision, and reasonableness (2).

Furthermore, the reasonableness of the selection in direct public works contracting does not end with the factual existence of urgency; it also requires evidence that the selected contractor possesses the specific technical and financial capacity appropriate to the magnitude of the risk assumed.

Naturally, in such circumstances, the statement of reasons will constitute one of the essential elements of the administrative award decision, with particular care being required—although this requirement applies to all administrative acts (3)—because the greater the authority vested in an official, the greater must be that official’s diligence in demonstrating that the legal power was exercised correctly and that the act issued conforms to the relevant factual and legal antecedents (4).

III. PRINCIPLES OF PUBLIC PROCUREMENT

Administrative contracting is governed by a series of principles that guide State action and ensure the proper protection of the public interest.

Among these, the following may be briefly highlighted: the principle of legality, which requires every administrative action to be grounded in a prior legal rule; the principle of reasonableness, which requires an appropriate relationship between the means employed and the objectives pursued; and the principle of competitive participation, which seeks to ensure the participation of multiple bidders.

Likewise, the principle of equality requires equitable treatment of all participants in the procedure, while the principle of transparency seeks to ensure publicity and oversight of administrative decisions.

These principles constitute legal limits on administrative discretion and guarantee the proper use of public resources.

IV. URGENCY AS GROUNDS FOR DIRECT CONTRACTING. THE PRINCIPLES OF GOOD GOVERNANCE AND TRANSPARENCY AS RULES GOVERNING SELECTION MECHANISMS

One of the most relevant grounds for resorting to direct contracting is administrative urgency, which legal scholarship characterizes as a situation in which the delay inherent in a tendering procedure could cause serious harm to the public interest.

Urgency arises when the Administration faces a situation requiring an immediate response that is incompatible with the timeframes inherent in ordinary contracting procedures.

In such circumstances, the legal system authorizes the Administration to adopt more expeditious contracting mechanisms, provided that the urgency is duly established and that the procedure respects the fundamental principles governing public procurement.

Indeed, certain extraordinary circumstances justify and require the State to resort to direct contracting to select a private contracting party, perhaps the best-known example being situations of urgency or emergency.

In such situations, the Administration is exempt from using public tendering, a process that inevitably requires more time.

The urgency that authorizes direct contracting must respond to objective and substantiated circumstances of such magnitude that they prevent another selection procedure from being conducted in a timely manner. This is expressly provided, in the area of the procurement of goods and services, by Decree No. 1104/16, which implements Article 116(c) of Law No. 12,510:

“Section 2—Contracts intended to be entered into pursuant to the exception to the use of public tendering or public competitive bidding established in Article 116(c), Section 2, must be evaluated and authorized by the official corresponding to the amount involved. The proceedings must state the grounds establishing the urgency or emergency, based on the premise that such urgency or emergency must be concrete, immediate, unforeseen, and proven, preventing another selection procedure from being conducted in a timely manner.”

Accordingly, urgency refers to a situation that does not admit delay in the solution adopted and cannot be based on subjective interpretations. Rather, the circumstances must objectively demonstrate indisputable urgency requiring measures to overcome them.

The authorization does not arise solely from a demand for speed in resolving a matter. There must be, and there must be evidence of, concrete and imminent harm to the public interest—whether social, economic, health-related, or security-related—in order to invoke situations affecting essential public functions.

Indeed, the public interest constitutes the interpretative standard inherent in the administrative legal relationship. This concept has now been expressly incorporated into positive law by Article 2(c) of Law No. 25,188 on Public Ethics, which requires public officials, in all their acts, to safeguard the interests of the State, directed toward the satisfaction of the general welfare, thereby giving priority to the public interest over private interests (5).

Manifest urgency, as grounds for direct contracting, is directly connected with pressing circumstances, pursuant to the principle that the public interest prevails over the principles of equality, free participation, and competition underlying tendering or competitive bidding. The objective reasoning is that a procedure of this nature requires time that cannot be spent if the public interest urgently requires the relevant goods, works, or services.

It has rightly been stated that the absence of bidder participation is characteristic of direct contracting, a matter related to the freedom granted to the Administration to select the contractor through this mechanism (6). Nevertheless, nothing prevents the Administration from using this mechanism following an abbreviated competitive process, which allows it to compare potential offers from different companies and thereby obtain advantageous terms, thus ensuring actual competitive participation.

It should also be emphasized that this contracting mechanism does not amount to the free choice of a bidder. In direct contracting, the Administration must justify, through a specific procedure, that the factual circumstances permit this type of contracting and that no other legally prescribed form is required (7).

Nor are the principles of publicity and transparency undermined. Publicity seeks to make known the activity carried out by the Public Administration within a particular contracting procedure, whereas transparency seeks to enable citizens to know what occurs within public administrations in relation to public procurement (8).

It should be noted that, under direct contracting, all of the principles governing public procurement must be observed. Accordingly, the recurrent assertion that the competitiveness and adversarial nature inherent in public tendering will always benefit the Public Administration because it will be able to obtain more reasonable prices resembles an empty dogma more than an invariably advantageous reality.

Giving priority to, or even establishing as a general rule, public tendering as the selection procedure is sound policy. However, treating the other mechanisms provided by law as improper, or even obstructing them while invoking transparency, is at the very least misguided.

That error becomes even more serious when it is argued that public tendering is based on considerations of administrative ethics and that exceptions must therefore be interpreted restrictively (9).

Indeed, such a hasty assertion assigns ethical superiority to a single mechanism for selecting the State’s contracting party, leaving the others isolated and immersed in an unjustified legal shadow.

It goes without saying that assigning an exclusive moral hierarchy to public tendering disregards the systemic unity of the public procurement framework.

Administrative ethics is not an exclusive attribute of any particular form of contracting; rather, it is a prerequisite for the validity of all State activity.

In this regard, transparency, good faith, and legitimate expectations—now expressly recognized in Santa Fe through Article 2 of Law No. 14,428—do not operate in watertight compartments. They impose equal obligations both in the elaborate formalities of public tendering and in the urgency of direct contracting.

To argue otherwise, as has been done under the guise of an axiom, is tantamount to accepting areas of legal ambiguity in which the Administration could relax its duties of probity. Such a proposition is, of course, inadmissible in a State governed by the rule of law.

The restrictive interpretation of exceptions should not become an excuse for administrative paralysis or useless formalism, since the true standard of contractual justice lies in Good Administration, which requires choosing the course of action that best satisfies the public interest at stake.

The ethical superiority of a procedure is measured by its ability to obtain the required performance in a timely and proper manner, preventing blind adherence to the general rule of public tendering from ultimately becoming, due to delay, a denial of essential services or an unjustified expenditure of public funds.

Good governance means government that responds to citizens’ expectations and needs and is reflected in the responsible exercise of public authority and the provision of quality services (10). Naturally, this principle extends beyond any particular procedure for selecting a private contracting party, as it must apply directly to the exercise of the administrative function.

In any event, every mechanism for selecting a private contracting party must be governed by the principle of transparency, in addition to strict compliance with the other principles characteristic of public procurement.

Without transparency in administrative conduct, it makes little difference which procedure is used, because in either case it will be vulnerable to corruption.

With regard to the principle of transparency, it should be emphasized that it has ceased to be merely an ethical standard and has become a supranational legal mandate. Indeed, pursuant to Article III(5) of the Inter-American Convention Against Corruption, approved by Law No. 24,759, States Parties must establish, maintain, and strengthen systems for the recruitment of public officials and for the procurement of goods and services by the State that ensure publicity, equity, and efficiency. This requires the Administration to publish not only the invitation to tender but also the results and final settlements, including in direct contracting procedures, thereby allowing public scrutiny.

In our Province, transparency is now operationalized through the Data Governance and Public Access to Information Law No. 14,256 (11), as well as through Articles 5 and 28 of Law No. 14,428 concerning “Algorithmic Traceability” and the use of electronic systems, which ensure the auditability of procedures.

As stated above, direct contracting on grounds of urgency does not constitute a waiver of the principles governing public procurement, but rather a procedural displacement based on the factual impossibility of waiting for the time required by a tender without jeopardizing public services or people’s safety.

In direct public works contracting, the principle of transparency is reflected primarily in the reasoning supporting the award decision. The Administration must include in the administrative file a price comparison or invitations to a minimum number of companies in the relevant field, thereby ensuring that, even under urgent circumstances, efforts were made to obtain the most advantageous offer.

Public tendering, although the general rule at the national level and in the Province of Santa Fe, often becomes a refuge for “disciplined incapacity.” As Gordillo points out (12), excessive formalism can ultimately undermine the essential purpose of obtaining the best offer capable of satisfying the public purposes at stake. He further notes that remnants of outdated practices once led officials to limit their actions to a blind application of formalities, thereby violating the central principle of competition or competitive participation.

Accordingly, Good Administration—now a legal principle in Santa Fe pursuant to Article 2 of Law No. 14,428—is the standard that can validate direct contracting where the administrator acted diligently to prevent greater harm to public funds or public services. In such circumstances, the form adopted—direct contracting—is fully justified notwithstanding the general preference for public tendering.

Ultimately, direct contracting, which has been mistakenly stigmatized, is a legitimate and necessary mechanism when the statutory grounds are satisfied. The key therefore does not lie in excluding this procedure, but in providing comprehensive reasons for its use and complying with the requirements of efficiency and transparency.

V. THE RECENT EXPERIENCE OF ROSARIO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. DIRECT CONTRACTING WITH MITIGATED COMPETITIVE PARTICIPATION

The rehabilitation and reconstruction of the runway at Rosario International Airport “Islas Malvinas” constitutes a recent precedent that makes it possible to examine the operation of direct contracting on grounds of urgency within a framework of full compliance with the principles governing public procurement, and as a suitable instrument for addressing an urgent and unavoidable State need effectively and in a timely manner.

In the case under consideration, the critical deterioration of airport infrastructure—particularly the runway—created certain risks to operational safety and to the continuity of air transportation services. Faced with this situation, the Airport Board resolved to resort to a direct contracting procedure that would allow the works to be carried out within a timeframe compatible with the operational requirements of the terminal, thereby ensuring the effective provision of the public service during a period of high demand.

In this context, and given the unavoidable nature of the required intervention, the administrative decision was based on Article 20 of Law No. 5,188, which—as noted above—provides exceptions to the general principle of public tendering when the circumstances make ordinary procedures impossible or unreasonable, particularly where reasons of urgency or situations that admit no delay are present.

The procedure adopted included invitations to specialized companies, the receipt and technical evaluation of proposals, the intervention of an Evaluation Committee, and the subsequent award of the works to the company whose offer was deemed most advantageous to the public interest. Thus, although an exceptional direct contracting mechanism was employed, the principles of transparency, competitive participation, reasonableness, and selection of the most advantageous offer underlying the public procurement system were preserved.

More specifically, this was a reasoned application of the exceptional direct contracting framework, in which the statutory prerequisites were established:

a) Existence of objective urgency: The condition of the runway reflected advanced structural deterioration, with an increasing risk to operational safety. The technical reports included in the administrative file indicated that the residual risk was tending toward unacceptable levels, exceeding the safety thresholds tolerable for airport operations.

This constituted a situation requiring immediate intervention in critical infrastructure essential to the public service.

b) Practical impossibility of conducting a public tender: The ordinary tendering procedure previously initiated in coordination with the Regulatory Authority of the National Airport System had been discontinued due to subsequent circumstances, completely altering the administrative situation. The resolution authorizing direct contracting stated that restarting a tendering procedure would involve timeframes incompatible with the urgent need to execute the works, particularly given the continuing deterioration of the infrastructure.

Although the previous tendering procedure had ultimately failed, it was relevant because it provided objective technical and budgetary parameters that served as a benchmark for assessing the economic reasonableness of the new procedure.

c) Protection of the public interest at stake: The Airport Board emphasized that the runway constitutes essential infrastructure for the provision of air transportation services and that its deterioration therefore directly affects the general interest. The factors considered included the expected increase in air operations, the development of the provincial air connectivity program, the future opening of new international routes, and the need to ensure regional logistical operations.

There was no doubt that delay in carrying out the works would result in operational restrictions, flight cancellations, or diversions, with significant economic and regional consequences.

Although this was a direct contracting procedure involving a degree of discretion in the selection of the private contractor, the procedure nevertheless incorporated mechanisms characteristic of competitive processes, thereby strengthening its legitimacy.

Indeed, invitations were sent to specialized companies and to the Argentine Construction Chamber; notices were published on the airport’s institutional website and on the official website of the Province of Santa Fe. A public opening ceremony was also held for the submitted bids, which were examined by an Evaluation Committee composed of technical specialists and officials appointed through administrative resolutions.

The Committee conducted a technical, economic, and formal assessment of the proposals, concluding that all of them complied with the tender specifications and recommending that the contract be awarded to Obring S.A. because its offer was the most economically advantageous.

The Airport Board adopted the technical opinion and awarded the works for a final amount of ARS 36,555,666,186.70, following a 1% improvement over the original proposal.

VI. DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CASE

The case of Rosario International Airport constitutes a particularly valuable example for the analysis of direct contracting in public works, as it demonstrates that this exceptional mechanism can be implemented in full compatibility with the structural principles of administrative law.

Indeed, the experience analyzed demonstrates that direct contracting can validly be structured on objective and reviewable foundations, such as: (i) adequate technical justification of the urgent circumstances; (ii) the existence of prior tendering procedures or market benchmarks that permit an assessment of the economic reasonableness of the offers; (iii) the implementation of competitive participation and transparency mechanisms even within an exceptional procedure; and (iv) the intervention of independent technical evaluation bodies or stages ensuring the selection of the offer most advantageous to the public interest.

Consequently, the case analyzed supports the conclusion that direct contracting, far from constituting a discretionary or arbitrary exception to the principle of public tendering, is a legally valid and necessary mechanism within the administrative contracting system. When properly justified by reasons of urgency and subject to compliance with the governing principles, it enables the State to respond effectively to unavoidable public needs.

VII. CONCLUSIONS

Direct contracting in the field of public works, far from constituting an area exempt from legality or a sphere of unfettered administrative discretion, legitimately forms part of the system for selecting contractual partners established by the Santa Fe legal framework, provided that the statutory grounds authorizing its use are effectively present and duly substantiated. Its exceptional nature does not place it outside the principles of public procurement; on the contrary, it imposes a heightened duty of reasoning, justification, and oversight.

Under Law No. 5,188, public tendering remains the general rule for public works. However, this does not authorize the remaining selection mechanisms to be regarded as inherently suspect or as ethically inferior forms of contracting. A systemic interpretation of the legal framework leads to the conclusion that the legitimacy of each procedure does not depend on its greater or lesser degree of formalism, but rather on its concrete ability to satisfy the public interest at stake while adhering to legality, reasonableness, transparency, equality, and good administration.

From this perspective, administrative urgency constitutes a particularly relevant statutory ground for direct contracting, but its invocation cannot be left to dogmatic or subjective assessments. It must involve an objective, concrete, immediate, unforeseen, and proven situation of such magnitude that the use of ordinary procedures becomes incompatible with the need to avoid a real risk of harm to the public interest. Only under these circumstances does direct contracting have sufficient legal justification as an appropriate mechanism for preventing harm to public services, safety, or public funds.

At the same time, this paper seeks to demonstrate that direct contracting does not necessarily entail the disappearance of the principles of competitive participation, publicity, and competition. Rather, those principles may undergo a functional reconfiguration in light of the circumstances of each case without losing their regulatory effectiveness.

Even when the Administration is not legally required to call a formal public tender, it must seek—as far as reasonably possible—to introduce stages involving comparison, competitive solicitation, sufficient publicity, technical evaluation, and reasoned decision-making. In this manner, the exceptional nature of the procedure does not result in opacity, but rather in a reasonable adaptation of the legal mechanism to the public need being addressed.

In this respect, the experience of Rosario International Airport “Islas Malvinas” is of particular doctrinal significance. The case demonstrates that direct contracting on grounds of urgency can be structured upon objective and verifiable foundations: technical evidence of a critical situation, the practical impossibility of reinitiating the ordinary tendering procedure within the necessary timeframe, precise identification of the public interest at stake, and implementation of mechanisms of mitigated competitive participation designed to preserve transparency, economy, and rationality in the selection of the contractor.

Precisely, one of the principal contributions of the case analyzed lies in demonstrating that direct contracting should not be understood as synonymous with discretionary selection of the contractual partner. On the contrary, when the procedure incorporates invitations to specialized companies, institutional publicity, public opening of bids, participation by technical bodies, and objective comparison of proposals, it is possible to recognize that a competitive logic remains in place, albeit one adapted to the urgency of the circumstances.

This “mitigated competitive participation” thus emerges as a useful category for describing exceptional procedures which, without fully reproducing public tendering, retain its substantive requirements of oversight and rationality.

Ultimately, this analysis supports the conclusion that direct contracting in public works should neither be stigmatized nor promoted uncritically. Its validity depends upon a rigorous equation between the statutory grounds authorizing it, sufficient reasoning, an appropriate procedure, and respect for the governing principles of administrative contracting.

When these requirements are satisfied, direct contracting ceases to be viewed as a mere tolerated exception and instead emerges as a legally legitimate, constitutionally and statutorily permissible, and administratively necessary tool for ensuring effective State responses to unavoidable public needs.

Under this approach, the true debate should not focus on an abstract opposition between public tendering and direct contracting, but rather on the system’s ability to require, in either case, decisions that are properly reasoned, transparent, traceable, and directed toward the optimal satisfaction of the public interest.

That, ultimately, is the measure of the legality of administrative action and the point at which legality, efficiency, and good administration converge.

Notes

(1) ARTICLE 20.—Public works referred to in Article 1 that are not performed directly by the Administration shall be awarded through public tendering. The following are exempt from this requirement and may be awarded through private tendering, competitive price bidding, or direct contracting, in the cases set forth below and in accordance with the rules established by the implementing regulations: (…) c) Works for which the tendering procedures cannot be followed because they are urgent, cannot be postponed, or are required by unforeseen circumstances demanding prompt execution.

(2) Office of the State Attorney General of the Province of Santa Fe, Opinions Nos. 011:2024; 0142/2024; 46:2025; and 149:2025.

(3) Article 10(e) of the new Law No. 14,428 (Administrative Procedure Law of the Province of Santa Fe), which requires that the administrative act be reasoned, “stating in concrete and clear terms the reasons that induce its issuance.”

(4) MARIENHOFF, Miguel, Treatise on Administrative Law, Volume II, p. 328 et seq., cited by the Administrative Litigation Court in Judgments 2/90, 54/90, and 267/98.

(5) IBM Argentina S.R.L. v. Province of Santa Fe, Administrative Litigation Appeal, February 23, 2022, Administrative Litigation Chamber of Santa Fe, A. y S., Volume 75, p. 394. Citing COMADIRA, Julio, Public Tendering. Concepts, Principles, and Issues, Depalma, pp. 282 et seq., Buenos Aires, 2000; and Administrative Law. Administrative Act. Administrative Procedure. Other Studies, 2nd updated and expanded edition, Lexis-Nexis, Abeledo-Perrot, pp. 284 et seq., Buenos Aires, 2003; criteria cited by this Chamber in Ivalsa (A. y S., Vol. 52, p. 162).

(6) MARTÍNEZ, Hernán J., Public Works Contract, Ed. Nova Tesis, p. 219.

(7) MARTÍNEZ, Hernán J., op. cit., p. 219.

(8) MELLADO RUIZ, The Principle of Comprehensive Transparency in Public-Sector Contracting, 2017, p. 91.

(9) PTN, Opinions, 77:265. Cited in DROMI, Roberto, Public Tendering, 5th Edition, Ed. Ciudad Argentina, p. 181.

(10) FERRO ILARDO, Susana B., Latin American States. Key Words for the Region, Buenos Aires, Dunken, 2008, p. 249.

(11) Law No. 14,256, Article 1—Public Innovation. Definition. Public Innovation is understood as the development, implementation, improvement, or incorporation of new solutions, processes, or approaches that improve the State’s responses, capacities for action and adaptation to dynamic and changing collective challenges, while improving the quality and effectiveness of interventions, citizen participation, and democratic quality.

(12) GORDILLO, Agustín, Treatise on Administrative Law, p. 732, see Chapter VII: “Informalism and Competitive Participation in Public Tendering.”

(*) Attorney-at-law practicing at Castagno–Franchi & Marcos – Abogados, heading the following practice areas: administrative law, contract law, insolvency and restructuring law, and also actively participating in matters concerning capital markets, investments, and asset protection.

(**) Attorney-at-law practicing at Castagno–Franchi & Marcos – Abogados, heading the following practice areas: public procurement, regulated public services, environmental law, and renewable energy, and also actively participating in complex matters involving infrastructure financing and public works.