The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich

friendly, but relations were characterized by mutual respect for the first time in eleven years. The parties even arranged to meet for a second time the next day. Then Obermaier said, “Our hands are tied.” The government, the prosecutor said, had a rigid policy against negotiating with fugitives. They would not be able to review the validity of the underlying tax charges unless Rich first returned to the United States and faced trial. Like Weinberg and Giuliani before him, U.S. Attorney Obermaier took the position that Rich would have to face jail before any other terms and conditions could be discussed, and the government would not provide any guarantees as to the sentences the defendants would receive.
“Not One Day in Jail”
     
    Garment tried to cheer Rich up after the meeting even though he was deeply disappointed by the prosecution’s refusal to negotiate. His client only had two options. Rich could either take his chance on a trial orplead guilty to some charge, which might involve a short prison term. “It’s a few months,” Garment told Rich. “You’ll lose weight. It’ll be easy. No manacles. You’ll come back.” 3 Rich shot back immediately, “Not one day. I will not spend one day in jail, because I did not commit a crime.” As a child, Rich had been held in an internment camp in Morocco with his parents. Close friends say that was one of his most traumatic experiences, and he never wanted to face imprisonment again. “It goes against my nature,” he says when asked why he did not agree to go back. “I’m innocent. I like to be free.”
    Rich nevertheless refused to quit. After all, he had become one of the most successful traders of all time because he never gave up. For him, a no was never final. Rich always thought long term in business, and his approach to his case was no different: “Let it sit for a while and try it again.” Every time a new U.S. attorney or assistant U.S. attorney was appointed, his lawyers tried to make contact. Their names read like a who’s who of the American justice system.
    When Obermaier left office in 1993, Mary Jo White became the first woman to be appointed U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. Later in the same year, she was to preside over the successful prosecutions in the World Trade Center bombing cases. She was also ultimately to become the prosecutor in charge of the investigation surrounding President Clinton’s decision to pardon Rich. “We are hopeful you will agree that the time for a constructive dialogue with the Government is now,” Jack Quinn wrote in a letter requesting a meeting. 4 The hope was dashed.
    When Gerard E. Lynch, who played an important role in the Iran-Contra investigation, was named head of the Criminal Division of the Southern District of New York, he received a letter from Professor Bernard Wolfman, one of the coauthors of the tax analysis. “Professor Ginsburg and I would be happy to discuss our views with you at your convenience and hope you will afford us the opportunity to do so,” Wolf-man wrote. 5 Lynch didn’t afford the opportunity.
    Patrick Fitzgerald also received a letter when he was assistant U.S.attorney; he would later become famous for his role as special counsel in charge of the Department of Justice’s investigation into the Valerie Plame Wilson affair. “The discussions we seek,” Rich’s lawyer Laurence A. Urgenson wrote to Fitzgerald, “concern clear and important issues which we assure you can be determined with a modest investment of time and without running afoul of your office policies.” 6 Fitzgerald turned down the request.
No Negotiations with Fugitives
     
    Just as Rich’s lawyers trotted out the same arguments over and over again, the prosecutors rejected them with the same arguments. “There is every reason to believe that if a full discussion of the evidence took place and convinced you that the Government could prove your clients’ guilt, little would change,” Fitzgerald wrote to Urgenson. 7 “Your clients would continue their life on the lam—with, perhaps, another change of lawyers. It is for that reason that the Government views discussions as to the merits of the case as inappropriate and pointless.”
    “It is our firm policy not to negotiate dispositions of criminal charges with fugitives,” Mary Jo White told Jack Quinn. 8 “Such negotiations would give defendants an incentive to flee, and from the Government’s perspective, would provide