The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich

“billionaire fugitive,” and journalists have written articles about “the most wanted white-collar criminal in U.S. history”—a Google search for this wording places Marc Rich right at the top of the list. 8 Understandably, the accusation of trading with the enemy weighs most heavily in public opinion. As the Republican Congressman Chris Shays stated when he summarized the public’s mood, “A traitor to [his] country, to our country.” 9 For many, Marc Rich is quite simply an enemy of the state.
    The biggest devil
. I was amazed to hear these words from Marc Rich himself. He may have his strengths, but volubility is not one of them. He speaks quite deliberately and succinctly, usually in only two or three sentences. I had been warned of this. If I could manage to get anything more than a “no,” “yes,” or “why,” I could be happy with the results. He speaks English with a barely noticeable German accent, his father’s language, and with an unexpectedly soft voice. While talking he looks you straight in the eyes and scrutinizes your reaction. His handshake is as firm as his conviction that reporters mean trouble.
Meeting Marc Rich
     
    I first met Marc Rich some months before our St. Moritz ski date. We were sitting in his office on the top floor of a run-of-the-mill steel-and-glass building next to the Zug railway station. To get up here, where you can enjoy the view from the large windows over the town’s commercial center and the gently rolling hills of the surrounding countryside, you have to pass through a highly sophisticated security system. In the building’s foyer, next to a popular gym, cameras keep track of visitors taking the elevator. Lawyers and asset managers have their offices here. On the fifth floor the visitor is confronted with an opaque door of frosted glass; the plaque reads MARC RICH GROUP . When you ring the bell you are aware another camera is scrutinizing you. The automatic door opens. Now you are trapped in a kind of glass cubicle, where the receptionist on the other side of a glass door inspects you. It would come asno surprise to discover the glass doors were bulletproof. Only after the first door has closed does the second door open, and you enter the company offices.
    In the waiting room, there is a small glass table and two black leather LC2 chairs designed by the Swiss artist and architect Le Corbusier. “Marc Rich Group, good morning,” an assistant says on her telephone, although German is usually spoken in Zug, and it is actually already late afternoon. I remember one of his most loyal traders once said to me that “the sun never sets in Marc Rich’s empire,” a reference to King Charles V of Spain (1500–1558), Holy Roman Emperor, who ruled over a world empire thanks to the discovery of America in 1492 by Christopher Columbus. “Marc was the undisputed King of Oil.”
    An assistant leads me through labyrinthine corridors decorated completely in white to Rich’s office. There are paintings by Miquel Barceló and Antony Tapies on the walls. A sand-colored carpet muffles the sound of footsteps. Just before I reach the director’s office, I notice two burly men behind a room divider sitting at their computers and looking rather bored. “Drivers,” the assistant says in answer to my question. “Security,” Marc Rich later confirms. The two bodyguards, who never leave his side, even when he goes across the street for lunch, remind me of the time when the American government had set a bounty on his head. It was the time when Rich was hunted the whole world over by agents and adventurers, and he only rode in an armored Mercedes.
    A small effective team of specialists led by a former Mossad officer provided for Rich’s security. They were clearly very successful, as the American agents who wanted to kidnap him in Switzerland and spirit him out of the country were never able to detain him. “He paid very well for security. He had the money to buy what he needed. It was like tackling a country,” Ken Hill told me in Florida. As a U.S. marshal, Hill had tried for fourteen years to capture Rich. (We’ll hear his story in chapter 12 .)
     
    “Which reproach hurts you most?” I ask in Rich’s office to get the interview rolling.
    “Which reproach are you referring to?” Rich asks in response.
    Whenever he thinks a question is imprecise, he likes to answer it with a question of his own. He’s sitting behind a long wooden desk and writing a note on a