Fall of the Bembergs

On the boss's 57th birthday, the mighty House of Bemberg was raided. In Buenos Aires last week, over the protests of Otto Bemberg, Argentine federal police ransacked the vaults, carted off records, securities, correspondence, bars of gold and sacks of coin from the Credito Industrial y Comercial, banking center of the Bemberg empire. Later they frisked other Bemberg strongholds in Buenos Aires.

The seizure shook Argentina, for the Bembergs are the richest family in the country, one of the richest in the world. Otto Bemberg came from Germany in 1868. His son, Otto Sebastian, made big money in brewing, banking and real estate. Retiring to Paris, he directed his ever-growing Argentine affairs from an inconspicuous office on Boulevard St. Germain. When he died in Monte Carlo at 75, he left four sons to increase the family fortune. Two of them, Otto and Federico, stuck to the job. Argentine society boasts of its rock-bound exclusiveness, but the Bembergs married aristocratically. Accepted in Buenos Aires by the snooty Jockey Club and the Circulo de Armas, they blossomed ornately in prewar Paris, where their salons were famous for social glitter.

With beer as the original source of its fortune, the House of Bemberg acquired a near-monopoly of brewing in Argentina, then branched into public utilities, cotton, dairy products, wool and yerba mate (Paraguay tea). Sum total of the family fortune was anyone's guess, for the Bembergs kept their mouths shut. Hostile estimates ran as high as a billion dollars.

Even if the Bembergs should lose all their Argentine holdings, they would not starve. The family has enormous investments abroad. In the U.S. the Bemberg holdings include a sizable share in the Liebmann Breweries of Brooklyn (Rheingold beer). According to one of its responsible officers, American Bemberg Corp. (rayon) has no connection with the Argentine Bembergs.

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