Foresaw Media Boom.

Mr. Eurnekian is no stranger to bold bets. A decade ago, he correctly foresaw that a combination of democratic government and free-market reforms would spur a media boom in Argentina. More recently, he has been at the forefront of investors, including George Soros of the U.S. and Italy's Benetton family, who believe Argentina will once again be one of the world's great agricultural powers. He has purchased a giant tract in the north of the country and is planting half of it with cotton for export.

"Eduardo is a visionary who also has a real knack for business," says Eric Pfeffer, president of Cendant Corp.'s hotel division in Parsippany, N.J. "He's a real find for us."

While Mr. Eurnekian's foreign partners have nothing but praise for the way he does business, his image in Argentina is more controversial. The son of Armenian immigrants, he started out in the family textile business, which by the early 1980s had fallen on hard times because of the disastrous state of the Argentine economy. Like many other companies in the textile industry, Mr. Eurnekian kept his companies afloat by borrowing tens of millions of dollars from a government development bank that was never repaid, people in the industry say.

Because of runaway inflation, the companies all contended that the loans were worthless, despite the government bank's insistence that they be indexed to inflation. During the 1980s, Mr. Eurnekian's brother and business partner held a senior economic post in the government of then President Raul Alfonsin.

Mr. Eurnekian denies ever borrowing money from the now-liquidated Banco Nacional de Desarrollo. The official in charge of the liquidation process at the economy ministry here says he can't confirm whether Mr. Eurnekian's companies borrowed money from the bank. "I don't want to cause myself any headaches," he says.