Pardoned financier Rich dies at age 78

GENEVA — GENEVA He was a wheeler-dealer pardoned by another consummate deal maker, a working-class Jewish boy who left Belgium to escape the Nazis and rose to become the billionaire "King of Commodities."

Marc Rich's connections to the rich and powerful not only made him fabulously wealthy but when he was indicted for fraud, racketeering and tax evasion on a grand scale, they helped secure him a pardon from Bill Clinton, hours before the U.S. president left office.

That triggered a political firestorm from critics who alleged Rich bought his pardon through donations that his ex-wife, songwriter Denise Rich, had made to the Democratic Party.

Rich died Wednesday of a stroke at a hospital in Lucerne, near his home for decades. He was 78, and his Israel-based spokesman Avner Azulay said he would be buried Thursday in a kibbutz in Israel.

Throughout his storied career at the pinnacle of high finance, Rich was known as a man who could deliver the big deals thanks to personal relationships he had forged with powerful figures around the world.

In a rare 1992 interview with NBC, Rich said that in his business, "we're not political. … That's just the philosophy of our company."

During the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, Rich used his Middle East contacts to purchase crude oil from Iran and Iraq and made a fortune selling it to American companies.

In 1983, while he was in Switzerland, Rich was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury on more than 50 counts of fraud, racketeering, trading with Iran during the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis and evading more than $48million in income taxes.

Although the Swiss refused to arrest or extradite Rich, he stayed on the FBI's Most Wanted List, narrowly escaping capture in Finland, Germany, Britain and Jamaica, until Clinton granted him a pardon.

Rich was born in Antwerp, Belgium, on Dec. 18, 1934. His Jewish family fled from the Nazis to the U.S. Rich had two daughters, Ilona Schachter-Rich and Danielle Kilstock Rich.

Copyright 2013 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

Posted

View the original article here