The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich

personification of understatement.
Gross Overreaction
     
    Our discussion of Rich’s own case developed into a conversation on the tendency of the United States to put its own laws above the laws of other nations. Europeans have a humorous expression: The United States has three main exports—rock ’n’ roll, blue jeans, and its view of the world. “The United States wants to apply its own peculiar laws to the whole world,” Rich claims. “I was and am satisfied that Switzerland lived up to its historic image and did not allow itself to be bullied by a big nation.” He adds in German,
“Die Schweiz verbeugte sich nicht.”
Switzerland did not bow.
    “The U.S. political and legal system has a long and very well known history of grossly overreacting,” Rich continues. “They often shoot with big cannons at small birds. Well-known recent examples include the cases against Martha Stewart or Arthur Andersen, [the latter of] which was one of the five biggest auditing companies before the U.S. destroyed it. It was destroyed because of the actions of a handful of its executives, and all eighty-five thousand innocent employees had to bear the dire consequences along with the shareholders.”
    When I ask him if he doubts the American justice system, Rich answers,“I do believe in the rule of law. Unfortunately, like everything created and applied by man, it is not always perfect. Winston Churchill once said, ‘You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing—after they have tried everything else.’ ”
Rich’s Biggest Mistake
     
    “My biggest mistake?” Rich repeats my question. “I clearly underestimated the zealots on the U.S. side, and I chose the wrong lawyers. In the past, whenever I had an issue with the police, I talked to them and settled it. I even proposed to do the same thing with the prosecutors, but my lawyer at that time, Ed Williams, said, ‘The worst you could do is to talk to them. We will confront them head-on.’ That was a huge mistake that greatly aggravated the problem. I regret it.”
    Rich suddenly switches languages in order to use a very German word:
die Ohnmacht
, which translates as “powerlessness” or “impotence.” I had asked him what he felt was the worst aspect of the entire affair. For a man who had pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, the fact that he was powerless despite all of his money, his contacts, and his iron will must have been unbearable. “He likes to be in control,” Denise Rich told me when we spoke of the effect the case had had on the family. “At that time he was out of control because he couldn’t do what he wanted to do. He couldn’t travel. He was depressed.” In my career as an investigative journalist, I have often spoken with people who were utterly convinced that they had been the victim of an overly zealous media and judiciary. Each and every one of them was deeply affected by the feeling of helplessness, the inability to make themselves heard, and a public perception of the events that was the complete opposite of their own views. Rich is no different. “I always had a good reputation. This case unjustifiably harmed my reputation,” he says.
    “Die Ohnmacht,”
Rich repeats before continuing again in English, “and the feeling of not getting a fair trial. We had the experience of how [the prosecutors] proceeded in the past, how they blocked all our accounts,and how they blocked all our relationships. It was, you know, a total attack. It had a very negative effect. Our companies were collapsing.” His trading empire would have been much larger had it not been for the case, he claims. According to Rich, persecution by U.S. authorities was one of the primary factors that forced him to sell his company years later (see chapter 17 ).
    After the indictment in September 1983, Rich’s competitors were sure that his companies were dead in the water. The racketeering charge combined with the freezing of millions of dollars in assets would have ruined most companies, but Rich’s managed to carry on. They may have been severely crippled, but they had survived. “My family, my friends, and my business partners always supported me because they knew better. Our business partners knew us as an honest, reliable, and competitive company, so they continued to do business with us,” Rich explains.
Why He Didn’t Come Back
     
    There was one decisive question that Sandy Weinberg did not hesitate to ask me: “If the case was so