Litigation funder Burford Capital has announced a win in one of its earliest investments in an international arbitration, saying in a release over the weekend that it stands to take home roughly $140 million from a $324 million recovery against the government of Argentina.

The underlying case was brought in 2008 on behalf of the bankrupt Spanish operators of the airlines Aerolíneas Argentinas, Argentina's flag carrier, and its subsidiary Austral-Cielos del Sur. In a lengthy decision handed down Friday, a three-person panel established at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) found the airlines were expropriated in violation of the bilateral investment treaty Spain and Argentina reached in 1991. One panel member dissented.

The case, Teinver v. The Argentine Republic, was a pioneering investment for Burford. It committed $13 million to help pay a portion of the legal fees for Houston-based Roberto Aguirre Luzi and his team at King & Spalding, which represented the claimants, in a deal in 2010. That was just a year after the litigation funder got off the ground.