How the Eskenazi became one of the richest families in Argentina

The trial never focused on the Eskenazi businesses, but placed this last name in the middle of a plot of power and money with TV standard trim.

Now, another mystery has the ESKENAZI as protagonists in a millionaire dispute over the control of actions of the Argentine oil company YPF, which they obtained before their nationalization.

And the question of the fifth of Olivos resurfaces: how did this family get here?

The Eskenazi have the Petersen group, a group of companies in various areas: engineering and construction, finance, agribusiness and urban services.

The head of the extraordinary expansion of the conglomerate from a simple construction company was Enrique Eskenazi, who died in January at age 99.

The Forbes list of the richest Argentines placed Eskenazi in the 20th place last year, with a fortune of US $ 1,150 million – more than double than in 2020 and greater than US $ 950 million attributed to the star of Football Lionel Messi.

Born in the Argentine city of Santa Fe, Eskenazi received a chemical engineer in Argentina and studied postgraduate studies in food engineering in the United States.

Return to his country, he began his business career in Bunge and Born, then a large Argentine agroindustrial corporation.

In the 1980s he went to work at the construction company Petersen, Thiele & Cruz and, being his manager, took a moment of crisis to buy his shares.

That was the first great acquisition of Eskenazi, from which he would begin to diversify his business portfolio, although he always kept the name Petersen as a badge and a low profile for his last name.

The incursion in the financial area approached Kirchner when this politician, being governor of Santa Cruz in the 1990s, privatized the bank of that southern province and his winner was the Eskenazi group.

Critics of that operation argue that he favored the buyer, because the bank maintained a portfolio of profitable customers while they would be in the hands of the state of difficult debts of difficult collection.

Prosecutor Luciani noticed years later that Banco Santa Cruz not only gave credits for more than US $ 10 million to the Kirchner, but it was the institution where Lazaro Báez was made, another friend of the marriage that between 2003 and 2015 received various contracts for road public works in that province.

And he pointed out that Báez, as the Kirchner's Testaferro, charged millions of millionaire for works that almost never materialized, while the Petersen company, Thiele & Cruz de Eskenazi was one of those that lent himself to “the maneuver to simulate a competition scenario that did not exist.”

Fernández de Kirchner rejected these accusations in the trial, which he attributes to a political persecution against him.

On the Petersen website there is still a letter from Eskenazi that describes his as “one of the most important economic groups of entirely Argentine capital”, with values such as “reliability, solidity and transparency.”

After his death, the management of the business conglomerate was in the hands of his children: he had five with his wife Hazel Sylvia Toni Storey, also deceased.

BBC Mundo tried through different ways to get in touch with one of them, Sebastián Eskenazi, or with some other person responsible for the Petersen group to reflect their point of view in this article, without achieving it until the moment of publication.

Someone who works in one of his companies explained that “it is a little hermetic family” and “do not usually give notes” to journalists.

The discretion that guided the Eskenazi began to crack when his group acquired 25% of the YPF share package, then the largest Argentine company and ownership of the Spanish Repsol.

With the support of the Kirchner from the government, that purchase occurred in two stages. In 2008, 14.9% of the shares of the Argentine oil company for US $ 2,235 million were made. Later, from another 10.1% for US $ 1,304 million.

The operation attracted looks on the Eskenazi for different reasons.

One of them is that they came from activities outside the energy sector and suddenly went on to occupy executive positions in a giant oil company.

Antonio Brufau then explained as president of Repsol YPF that “the Petersen group is the most suitable partner for their experience in regulated markets, for its industrial and financial structure and for its knowledge of Argentine reality.”

Another striking aspect was the way they bought the shares, with loans that repsol and a consortium of foreign banks, to pay with the dividends that would later obtain from the same YPF.

“The way in which the Eskenazi family acquired the actions of YPF frankly is scandalous,” says Juan Javier Negri, an Argentine lawyer specialized in mergers and business acquisitions.

“They practically bought without a penny,” Negri tells BBC Mundo. “They promised to pay 100, and 98 arrived via dividends in the future, so that the initial investment was very scarce.”

That operation was denounced as allegedly illicit by deputies of the time, but the case still does not advance substantially in justice despite the years. At the time, representatives of the company denied irregularities.

The Petersen Group Communication Area affirmed BBC Mundo after the publication of this article that “the entire operation met all the transparency and regulation requirements required by the control agencies” of Argentina, Spain and the USA.

Things would complicate more when the Government of Fernández de Kirchner re -statized YPF with the endorsement of Congress in 2012, under the premise of energy sovereignty and the need for Argentina to boost oil ventures.

By acquiring 51% of YPF's shares in the hands of Repsol for about US $ 5,000 million, the Argentine State avoided expanding the offer from the other shareholders (including the Eskenazi) as required by the company's statute.

That gave rise to a lawsuit in New York that today is considered one of the most transcendent causes of recent times for Argentina.

The judicial claim is headed by the Burford Capital Fund, which is dedicated to finance legal actions of doubtful result and bought 70% of the litigation rights to two energy companies of the Petersen group that declared bankruptcy after the expropriation of YPF.

The Judge of the New York Court, Loretta Presska, gave the right to the plaintiffs in 2023 and ordered Argentina to pay for about US $ 16,000 million.

Argentina has appealed the ruling, which puts its ultraliberal president Javier Milei in the unique obligation to defend a state of which he usually delays. Milei recently obtained the support of the Donald Trump government in the US.

The unknown is what will finally happen with 51% of YPF's shares in the hands of the Argentine State, since the court order provides for them to be delivered as a form of payment.

But there is also a mystery: who have 30% of the rights of the trial, that is, the part that Burford never acquired from the Petersen group companies in competition?

That portion in unknown hands would be worth, according to the values established in the process, about US $ 5,000 million.

The Petersen group affirms that it resigned from the right to litigate against the Argentine State and “is totally oblivious to the lawsuit” that Burford began after buying the rights to do so.

Negri points out that however “there are founded suspicions that the Eskenazi family retained a part of the lawsuit.”

“If you ever recover funds from the Argentine State,” he adds, “it is likely that part of those funds will end up back in the family.”

In this case, perhaps after paying accounts with creditors for the breakdown of their energy companies, the Eskenazi count profits once more.

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