Ruthlessness Is Rich's Game Billionaire fugitive lived high life one step ahead of law
Dr Fuji Kamikase
money? I wonder what Quinn's pay off was to persuade
the ever eager to please Clinton to pardon his client?
Ruthlessness Is Rich's Game Billionaire fugitive lived high life
one step ahead of law
By HELEN KENNEDY
Daily News Washington Bureau
is life is the stuff of a particularly gripping airplane novel.
As if scripted by some twisted combination of John le Carré and
Judith Krantz, he went from New York University dropout to
mailroom clerk to modern-day alchemist, turning lead and aluminum
— and smuggled oil — into pots of gold.
He secretly dealt with the world's pariah nations and ended up
living lavishly in exile in Switzerland, using influence and
spies to keep one step ahead of U.S. marshals, Interpol agents
and bounty hunters.
Denise Rich gives sax fiend Bill Clinton a present, while Hillary
applauds.
But when it comes to a billionaire antihero — a man so fabulously
wealthy and ruthlessly powerful that it's whispered he personally
controlled the economies of a couple dozen small nations — not
even the worst novelist would be obvious enough to name his
character "Marc Rich."
That was something his family did for him.
Born Marc David Reich in Belgium in 1934, his family fled the
Nazis for America in 1942.
His father became a successful businessman, an arena in which
Rich showed early promise. His report card from Rhodes prep
school in Manhattan called him an "actively creative boy with a
strong commitment to moving ahead."
He dropped out of college in his sophomore year for the bottom
rung at the Philipp Brothers commodities trading firm. He spent
years learning the ropes and came to be regarded as a son by the
firm's owner.
A soft-spoken workaholic with hooded eyes and a taste for fine
cigars, Rich married Denise Eisenberg, a New England heiress as
lively as he was introverted. They had three daughters.
By the early 1970s, Rich was a star, negotiating huge oil deals
with Iran and Iraq that earned him a $1 million bonus.
But when the company balked at paying so large a bonus, Rich set
up his own firm. He turned against his old mentors with a
vengeance, stealing clients, planting spies and taking losses
just to undercut his former bosses.
With a potent combination of trading genius, nerves of steel and
tissue-thin morals, Rich became a billionaire, buying and selling
oil and metals in fiendishly complicated maneuvers.
Marc Rich, former international fugitive
Wall Street Journal reporter Craig Copetas, who wrote a 1985 book
about Rich, called him "a beautifully sinister executive who
could frame deals with the artistry of a pool shark."
In 1983, the law was sniffing around. The government, in the
person of a hotshot U.S. attorney named Rudy Giuliani, charged
Rich with fleecing taxpayers for $48 million and trading oil to
Iran during the 1979 embassy hostage crisis.
Giuliani called it "the largest tax evasion scheme ever
prosecuted."
Rich always has denied any criminal wrongdoing. He and his
partner, Pincus Green, fled to Switzerland, which does not
extradite tax cheats.
Rather than reveal details of his company's workings, Rich paid
contempt of court fines of $50,000 a day for more than a year. He
wrote a settlement check for $113,018,306.71, but criminal
charges remained on the books, barring his return.
He lived in lavish exile in a five-bedroom mansion crammed with
priceless modern art, including two Picassos. He bought a seaside
estate in Spain. His wife became a pop lyricist and scored
several hits.
From his quiet Swiss hideout, Rich's tentacles stretched across
the world into dozens of countries. Embargoes and sanctions meant
nothing to him but opportunity. He bought oil from Iran, Iraq and
the Soviet Union and sold it to Cuba and South Africa and Serbia.
In whispers and court documents, the allegations flew. While
there is no conclusive proof, Rich and his shadowy companies are
said to have looted gold from the collapsing Soviet Union, sold
Korean weapons to Iran, illegally cornered the tin and aluminum
markets, made off with chunks of the Gross Domestic Product of
Finland and Romania and jumped into bed with the Russian mafia.
"The best way to describe this guy is he considers himself a
citizen of the world inconvenienced by the laws of nations," said
Howard Safir, former New York City police commissioner and head
of the U.S. Marshals Service.
Rich was into everything — metals and grain, oil and minerals,
gold and hotels. His reach extends into almost every American's
jingling pocket. From 1988 to 1992, even as he was the nation's
most wanted white-collar fugitive, the federal government bought
$45 million in zinc, nickel and copper from him for the U.S. Mint
to make coins.
Rich spent millions trying to buy back his good name. He funded a
fellowship at Oxford, an eye clinic in Zimbabwe, a Palestinian
pediatric center and the 1988 Jamaican bobsled Olympic team.
In Switzerland, he funded hockey teams, chamber orchestras and an
organization that trains dogs to sniff out earthquake survivors.
In Israel, he paid for museums and hospitals, making allies of
conductor Zubin Mehta, top politicians and the former head of the
Mossad.
But all his money and influence couldn't buy the one thing he
wanted most: the ability to return to America without going to
jail.
He kept a series of flacks and politically connected Washington
superlawyers on retainer to wage a constant public relations
campaign on his behalf. He offered Washington enormous amounts of
settlement money, and even proposed becoming an international
spy, in a bid to keep out of jail.
But it was all to no avail.
Rich very occasionally emerged from the shadows to grant a news
interview, and there was always a plaintiveness added to his
claims of innocence.
He complained, understandably, of missing the funerals in the
U.S. of his father and a daughter who died at 27 of leukemia. In
another interview, amid his sumptuous Swiss splendor, he longed
for a regular American burger. To Israeli newspapers, he
suggested Giuliani went after him because he is a Jew.
No matter how luxurious life was, it was still life on the lam.
Rich traveled with armed guards to fend off bounty hunters
seeking the $750,000 U.S. reward for his capture.
Safir was among those who went to Zug, Switzerland, with an
elaborate plot to trap the fugitive billionaire.
"We had a pretty clever sting operation, but the Swiss
authorities found out and threatened to arrest us," Safir said.
"He had tremendous sources of information in the Swiss government
— in a lot of governments."
Safir wouldn't admit it, but many of those chasing Rich over the
years believe he had high-level help in the U.S. government. No
one stays that lucky for that long.
Rich had some close calls, though. Copetas describes a 1986
incident when Rich was almost nabbed after sneaking into England.
Airport cops, alerted to a terrorist threat, were combing every
passenger's luggage. Rich ducked into a phone booth and abandoned
$3 million in checks made out to him — slipping them into the
pages of a phone book — so he could board the plane unmolested.
In 1989, Rich began appearing with a young blond model, Gisela
Rossi, and they moved into a heavily fortified villa near Lucerne
a few years later.
His embittered wife, now an A-list Manhattan hostess, divorced
him and sued for $500 million.
"For 25 years I was a loyal wife," Denise Rich told a Swiss
magazine. "People gossiped, said he was a crook. But I stood by
him. He shows his thanks by cheating on me with another woman and
publicly humiliating me and my children."
The final settlement was not disclosed, but it must have been
enough to soften Denise Rich's feeling toward her ex — enough to
start lobbying President Bill Clinton for the pardon that would
bring him home.
http://www.nydailynews.com/2001-01-28/News_and_Views/Beyond_the_C
ity/a-97688.asp
God Bless America
Fuji
God bless George W Bush, we are free at last!
rose...@rapidnet.com
a clue:
>Is there any limit to how low the Clintons will stoop for
>money?
You mean like "mother suer" Klayman?
BTW, Rich was in trouble for doing business during sanctions against our
enemies.
Gee, isn't that what your hero mcreagan did?