The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich

of peace spitted on a bayonet in front of the League of Nations building in Geneva. “Succeeding in business became a function of Marc’s life,” he then says about his friend. Over the years, success became an end in itself; it became the true meaning of life.
His Greatest Strength
     
    “His greatest strength?” Ursula Santo Domingo repeated my question. We were sitting in her apartment in an upscale neighborhood on the outskirts of Madrid. The elegant marquesa with German roots was Rich’s first secretary. She has known him for more than forty years. Later their families became friends, and they sometimes went on vacation together. “He is what we call
superdotado
in Spanish, a gifted individual. His greatest strength is surely the fact that he does not give up until he has achieved his goal. He could work on something day and night until it finally worked out. He never thought of anything else except work. You cannot achieve what he has achieved if you only work eight hours a day and keep your weekends free.”
    All successful commodities traders, Marc Rich included, are aware that they are living their lives on a knife edge. There is a very fine linebetween riches and ruin, between right and wrong, between success and loneliness. A South American oil trader told me of being hired by Rich in the 1970s. “Marc picked up a knife with his left hand and ran his right index finger over the edge of the blade. He said, ‘As a trader you often walk on the blade. Be careful and don’t step off.’ ” If one believes Rudy Giuliani and his assistant, Sandy Weinberg, then Rich really did step off in the early 1980s. “We didn’t have a good case, we had an overwhelming case,” Weinberg told me. However, Giuliani and Weinberg never had to prove in court how good their case actually was. As Rich elected not to return to the United States, the trial never took place and he was never convicted—or acquitted.
    One aspect of Marc Rich’s career that was virtually forgotten during the entire affair was his unique entrepreneurial success. For starters, he is more than just a profiteer and boycott breaker. It was not Rich’s alleged tax evasion that made him the twentieth century’s most dominant trader. When I asked how he had managed to achieve so much, he answered with the standard trader’s joke, “Buy low, sell high.” Then he added in a more serious tone, “The ingredients are hard work, hard work, and hard work—and good collaborators. Obviously a little bit of luck helps also.” These are surely important elements of success, but they cannot provide a good explanation for the sheer scale of his remarkable achievements.
     
    It is because I want to speak to Rich about all of these things that I am waiting in the Suvretta ski lift parking lot in St. Moritz on a cold early morning. We had agreed to meet at eight thirty, and not a minute later a grass green car pulls up and Marc Rich climbs out. It is not one of those Mercedes, BMWs, or Jeep SUVs that are so fashionable among the jet-set crowd but an unimposing Subaru Legacy with Lucerne plates that has obviously seen a few years. One of the burly men I had met in Rich’s office is sitting behind the wheel. The bodyguard turns out to be a kind of butler. He helps Rich unload his skis.
    If a journalist were to happen to observe this rather unspectacularscene, he or she could never imagine who was standing here. Rich is wearing a black helmet with ski goggles, a bright red jacket, and blue ski pants. A look at his feet reveals the true ski aficionado—if your ski boots prove comfortable, you keep them forever. He is, as every year, accompanied by his daughters Ilona and Danielle with their families. It is obvious that he enjoys their company. “Please stay here, don’t go yet. I miss you every day,” he says on the chairlift to Danielle, who is leaving for the States the next day. “I have to go back to New York. Mother would be very sad if I didn’t come back to her,” Danielle answers. “Call her and tell her to come here,” Rich insists. Danielle shakes her head. “You know she has a history in St. Moritz. I don’t think she would feel at ease here.” This short conversation sums up the entire story. Rich met Gisela Rossi, an attractive German woman, in 1992. In the end she turned out to be a reason for divorce (see chapter 16 ).
    The first half of the 1990s was a time when everything suddenly seemed to be going wrong. Marc Rich was free, but