43 consideration the provisions of Article 29(b) thereof. The First Transitory Final Provision of the 1993 Constitution of Peru acknowledges that the pensions of public employees are an acquired right, and the Constitutional Court established that the right to an equalized pension established in Decree Law No. 20530 constituted an acquired right. Arguments of the representatives of the alleged victims and their next of kin 91. With regard to Article 21 of the Convention, the representatives of the alleged victims and their next of kin indicated that: a) In accordance with the regime of Decree Law No. 20530, the pensions of the alleged victims were equalized each time the pay scale of their active counterparts in the SBS was modified until, in September 1992, the alleged victims were illegally and unconstitutionally deprived of the economic resources represented by their complete equalized pensions. The reduction in the pensions was carried out, first as a “de facto retention” and then was allegedly “legalized” by the retroactive application of “pension caps” established in November 1992 by Decree Law No. 25792, which signified a substantial erosion of the patrimony of the five pensioners and had “confiscatory connotations”; b) The reduction of the pensions was not based on a State decision substantiated by reasons of public utility or social interest and “even in the rejected assumption that this had been the case, the respective State decision was not transmitted as established by law and the rules of due legal process.” In addition, there is no evidence that this capping was based on “any criterion of reasonableness”; in other words, that it responded to a legitimate purpose, “inasmuch as it represented the interests of society and did not alter the substance of the rights which had been temporarily harmed.” The right to property was affected beyond the scope provided for in the Convention; c) The State undertook to administer appropriately the Pension Fund managed by the SBS –to which the five pensioners made contributions– and to guarantee the future payment of their pensions under the pension regime regulated by Decree Law No. 20530. When they ceased to work for the SBS and opted for an equalized pension, the alleged victims became creditors of the State, which –through the SBS– became a debtor to them and was therefore obliged to pay them monthly a pension equalized “with the salary of their active counterparts, who occupied the same or a similar function to the one occupied by the pensioners when they were working.” The “unilateral reduction” of the pensions of the alleged victims “constituted an illegal and undue expropriation of an asset to which they were creditors and which was legally their property”; d) The First Transitory Final Provision of the 1993 Constitution of Peru establishes that legally recognized pension rights are acquired rights that cannot be eroded by the establishment of subsequent modifications to the pension regimes, and the Constitutional Court indicated that the right to an equalized pension regulated by Decree Law No. 20530 constituted an acquired right. Based on the criterion established in Article 29(b) of the Convention, the nature of an acquired right of the pensions of employees