Bankruptcy by Ballot

One grey morning in Buenos Aires last week a milling throng of 3,000 massed in front of the River Plate Club. Shuffling and shivering in the cold of the South American winter, they waited neither for soccer nor for revolution, but for a court of law to convene. No ordinary courtroom could have held all the clamoring creditors of Alberto Abraham Natin, 55, a dapper, moonfaced real-estate wheeler-dealer who was charged with fraud and faced with bankruptcy. Before the crowd, seated at a stand draped in dark red felt, was a stern-faced federal judge. After months of delays and postponements, the time of decision had finally come in one of Argentina's most notorious financial scandals.

Flamboyant Stock Hawking. In Argentina's inflation-plagued economy, businessmen know bankruptcy almost as well as success. The commerce courts are clogged with tangled litigation; 1,780 bankruptcies were declared in 1962. But no other financial empire has fallen with as resounding a crash as Natin's. Only four years ago, Natin was the owner of a small company with the long name of Organization for Trade, Administration, Property and Real Estate Representation--or simply ONAPRI.

Then in a flamboyant, stock-hawking promotion, Natin held out promises of fantastic future profits in construction and real estate, enlisted glamorous TV and movie celebrities as initial backers.

ONAPRI became the hottest piece of paper in the country, and Natin had no trouble selling $16 million worth of stock to 13,000 workers, socialites and laden ladies.

The disenchantment was swift. During Argentina's 1962 recession, stockbrokers hauled Natin into court to collect their commissions, and investors stormed the courts in panic. Natin was bounced in and out of jail three times on various charges of fraud, bad checks and "economic delinquency."

Cheers & Handcuffs. At the first mass hearing last May, about 10,000 creditors showed up, as much to see the pudgy operator as to hear a report of ONAPRI'S financial plight. When he appeared, handcuffed to two policemen, his creditors cheered loudly. Natin, the court determined, had liabilities of $17.1 million, and only $4,900,000 in assets. But the court agreed to call another meeting to let the stockholders decide by a vote whether he should be given a chance to settle his debts or be declared bankrupt.

Natin figured he had a chance. At the meeting last week, he made one last plea for a concordato--an agreement to withhold bankruptcy proceedings. He asked for two years: "ONAPRI can recover its position if it is permitted to continue operating." In secret balloting, some 7,600 creditors favored giving Natin his time, but the margin was short of the required two-thirds. Natin's empire was declared bankrupt, and Natin went back to jail.

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