Is this the world's most unlikely billionaire? | 60 Minutes Australia

there's no one in the world quite like betty clemenco and certainly no one in the world who from the moment of conception yes conception can boast such an extraordinary life her life began in the grimy cell of a sydney police station she was born dependent on drugs and abandoned by her biological mother after just seven weeks and then adopted by a holocaust survivor his name was john saunders and along with frank loewy started the giant westfield shopping empire these days betty is a tattooed billionaire with a passion for racing cars so strap yourselves in for one heck of a ride v8 racing has always been a blokey sport my butterflies are going like they normally do but thanks to betty clemenco not any longer massive damage it's completely plucked the bonnet and the front guard off that car oh that is cool it's not my car strutting her stuff on race day betty is the tattooed no-nonsense owner of the new erebus team hitting her three mercedes supercars against the stalwarts holden and ford and happily letting the v8s hierarchy know what she thinks you have to have a war you have to have battles you have to have you know if you if you can't stomach it then if you you know the only time i cry is when i want something that's the advantage of being the only woman if if one of the other owners started crying they'd be you know seen as a whim if i start crying so poor betty you're ashamed i am very shameless [Music] have you finished your home with other places you've been to in your life yeah i have actually um if not for the fast cars and the opulence of her four-story home in sydney's eastern suburbs it's easy to forget betty clemenco has an estimated family worth of a billion dollars so is this an area that you're drawn to very often oh yeah i love it up here except you can get very but how she came to this extreme privilege is one of the most extraordinary stories ever [Music] seeing this sweet child who could guess her dire start in life 54 years ago what do you know about your natural parents my biological mother was at her darkest deepest time and she was on the streets and she was picked up for prostitution and was taken to king's cross police station and my biological father and her became biological in the back of cell number three and that's where i was conceived and you know what i think it's a great story her mother was a drug addict and so betty was also born with a drug addiction when she was seven weeks old she was given away to the orphanage the fact that i was a drug dependent baby i would have been crying i would have had a hard time and her reasons are her own but or if i had actually met her if she would been alive i would have said thank you thank you thank you thank you you know you did the best thing in the world because i had the privilege of meeting a man that was not just my father but he was my friend i mean he was also my archenemy but he was my friend [Music] that man was john saunders the co-founder of the westfield empire he and his wife etta survived the holocaust fled hungary and arrived in australia with nothing desperate to be parents but unable to have children they happened to visit the same orphanage where betty had been dumped they were due to pick up a baby boy who looked like them but somehow found betty instead and he went in the room there's about 30 children in the room and then this boy there who was you know mediterranean looking with the dark hair dark eyes and my father said wait a minute wait a minute i just want to check everything out so i know that i'm getting the best and he just walked up and down the aisles and i was at the very back and apparently i was laughing and he goes nope i want this one she's got a sense of humor and that was the beginning of a great relationship and that was at seven weeks yeah of age you were laughing in your cot i don't know if i was laughing or screaming he thought i was laughing and that's good enough for me i love to talk while i drive so if i start calling people names don't worry it just happens the betty john saunders impulsive change of mind meant a pauper would grow up as a princess do you you know when people see you coming betty do you think that they would think of you as a mercedes driver no i do get weird looks i get looks of maybe she stole it but all those years ago money and the fact she was adopted simply weren't that important what did your parents tell you about your adoption nothing i was informed by a boy my age we had a fight and he yelled at me and said do you know you're adopted so of course i ran out and said to my father and mother am i adopted and they just looked at me said yes that was it so good and i walked away it didn't bother you why should it bother me i would even back then i knew that i was loved i'd rather be loved by people who are not genetically bound to me than people who are genetically bound to me and couldn't give a crap in the late 50s and early 60s the business world knew john saunders as the tough immigrant who'd started westfield after recruiting junior partner frank loewy but to betty he was the man who gave her hope do you often think about your life if he hadn't chosen you oh very scarily so good english betty i probably would have made my mark but more in the body bonnie and clyde way than in any other way after school betty tried to conform she joined the family business working in property development she married young and had two sons but the relationship didn't work out something was missing and it wasn't until she met daniel clemenco that the real betty emerged how did you guys meet how did you come together at a very city pub of the rocks and we met and it was we were we were instantly married weren't we darling yeah it didn't take long what do you mean when you say you were instantly married we i don't think we even fell in love it was just a sense of belonging it worked day one from day one we just belong together and he was 19 and i was 29. how do you know at 19 did you fit together with a woman who's 29 has two children exactly how did you know that good question that is a really tough question it just felt right this is a mean question but it was part of the attraction the money that came out that's probably the one thing that actually made me question it your favorite flash gordon 24 years on betty and daniel are a picture of domestic bliss and completely inseparable i'm a happy woman but when they first started seeing each other betty's father tried his best to separate them by disowning her betty had a choice money or love daniel came from what he considered to be the wrong side of the tracks and i didn't actually know there were tracks and i asked him why why do you treat me like this when other people have done worse things to you so at that point when your father said marry him and you're no longer part of this family you're no longer part of the richness of this family did you think twice about leaving no there was no thinking involved so you went from this life of luxury to what i had to do everything and i learned i didn't know how to iron or caught i still don't learn very well i cook but there was no one to clean up after me so if i didn't clean it up then it wasn't cleaned and i learned how to do all that and it changed the way i do things it i was lazy i really was lazy and it just changed what i did so this is little dude yes this is little dude she's a grandmother now he is one of two loves of my lives and understandably for someone with her starting life betty thinks family is priceless oh yeah no grandma will take him for his first tattoo her estrangement from her father went on for years but ended as suddenly as it began when she and daniel had their own baby he actually came to the hospital and he had that very old mentality that big strong boys will will rule the world so he looked down at this 11 pound baby it was 27 inches and we said beautiful baby it was the first thing you said to me beautiful baby and that's when it just all kind of melded back in it was good you're just awesome i might give you one two it's been these days betty considers almost everyone part of her family especially the thousands of new fans many of them female she's brought to v8 supercar racing and someone asked me about v8s they wanted to know what is v8 why does it make it different to any other race in the in the world and i said well it's like taking 27 women who are the same size in the same shape and can run the same distance at the same time and putting them outside david jones on the boxing day sale and telling them there is only one item left in the whole shop and you open the doors and you let those 27 women run and it's a matter of pushing and elbowing and everything else because it's a they're all fair they can all run the same speed but they will stay in this very tight-knit group just to get to that one prize and that's what v8 is all joking aside owning a v8 team is no joyride and going fast burns up the money fast so cool [Music] betty learned to be a rev head at her father's knee they watched formula one together sadly he died before betty formed her team what do you think your dad would think of of you owning this i think i was mad are you making any money out of it oh god no so what would he have thought about that that but that part i think he would have gone think about it betty it's expensive but it's paying off in less than a year in the sport the mercedes team is already moving up the grid and that's making the traditional holden and ford teams nervous most followers of holden or ford will say well i'm a holden man but if we can't win i want you to win i'm a forward man but if we can't win i want you to win and i've i've kind of picked up all the the i'm neutral i'm switzerland i love it i love i love i love the sense of winning betty clemenco is so full of life it's impossible not to feel energized in her company sure the money helps but all of that wealth all of those mercedes and even daniel's super sleek lamborghini mean nothing when stacked up against family this is the reason i do what i do you know this is why um i never gave up this child carries part of me and being adopted that you don't get that growing up you don't get that you know what i mean it was it's part of me it's something that i can leave where i've never had anything to leave before isn't that right baby my worth doesn't come from the dollar sign my worth comes from the people around me and if you then i'm a zillionaire hello i'm tara brown thanks for watching to keep up with the latest from 60 minutes australia make sure you subscribe to our channel you can also download the nine now app for full episodes and other exclusive 60 minutes content

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 356,322

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Charles Wooley, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Allison Langdon, Tom Steinfort, Ellen Fanning, Peter Overton, Karl Stefanovic, Ray Martin, Peter Stefanovic, Jana Wendt, Jeff McMullen, Gerald Stone, Sarah Abo, Betty Klimenko, motorsport, Erebus, supercars, billionaire, Supercars Championship, bogan, westfield, rich, mega wealthy, bathurst 1000, racing, V8, holocaust, survivors, adopted, drug baby, lucky, luckiest woman, poverty, rags to riches

Id: hVf_P4wixFY

Length: 13min 29sec (809 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 09 2021