The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich

defendants with the inappropriate leverage and luxury of remaining absent unless and until the Government agrees to their terms.” André Wicki, a thoughtful, humorous man, is annoyed by White’s response to this day. “There is no such policy. On the contrary. Federal prosecutors in the Southern District and elsewhere have entered into negotiation and settlement of criminal cases against indicted individuals who did not return to face trial,” he says.
    It is surprising the amount of time and the enormous quantity of money that Rich was prepared to invest trying his luck with the Southern District of New York only to be disappointed time and time again. He spent millions in lawyers’ fees. It was not unusual for one of his lawyers to receive a retainer of55,000—per month.
    “Personal interests and feelings on their side got into the way of a fair solution. I kept trying and nothing succeeded,” Rich says matter-of factly, as if he were talking about the lottery. So why on earth did he make the effort? “It’s normal,” he says. “I’m innocent.” “You could have said to yourself,” I interject, “ ‘I’m safe in Switzerland, business is going well, let’s forget about this case in the United States and move on.’ ” “I did pretty much that, but I was always interested to settle it if possible,” Rich answers. I ask him what the advantage of a settlement would have been. “To be completely free,” he says, “which is what I am now.” Why were the prosecutors of the Southern District of New York so dogged? “I guess they had nothing to gain by settling,” Rich says quietly, not betraying any sign of how angry he was at the behavior of the prosecutors back then. “Marc was genuinely completely confounded as to why he was so vilified and unable to present, you know, his side of the story and put it into context,” Laurence Urgenson revealed.
“Vindictive Time”
     
    Marc Rich’s lawyers do not try to conceal their dissatisfaction with U.S. justice, as it was practiced in the Southern District of New York. “The fact that this truth mattered not one whit to the U.S. Attorney’s office, and the fact that the political system as a whole allowed the prosecutors to behave with such willfulness, was one of the chief examples of the dangerous state into which our politics had fallen after Watergate,” wrote Leonard Garment, referring to a “vindictive time.” “[Marc Rich] had the bad luck to be pulled into the vortex of post-Vietnam, post-Watergate American politics, in which every policy problem was labeled a scandal and each dispute with the government was considered a criminal matter.” 9 The U.S. attorneys, Bob Fink said, “were much more interested in maintaining the credibility of the U.S. Attorney’s Office than in reviewing if mistakes had been made. If they were wrong in such an important case it would damage their reputation and influence.”
    Marc Rich spent almost two decades on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.His name was only removed from it on January 21, 2001—the day after Bill Clinton pardoned him. This fact made Rich’s business transactions rather more difficult, but it did not put a stop to them. “Contrary to the myth, I was able to travel to a number of other countries, so I did not feel too restricted,” he told me. He seemed to take great satisfaction from that.

 

     

The
SECRETS
of
SUCCESS
     
    From Angola to South Africa
     

    I
t came as a surprise to all, and for some it was nothing less than “one of the wonders of the business world.” 1 Even though he was pursued by the most powerful nation on earth, which did everything possible to thwart his business dealings, Marc Rich was able to continually expand his company, until it became the world’s largest and most successful independent oil and metals trading company. In 1990, seven years after he was indicted in New York, he was active in 128 countries, had forty-eight offices around the globe, and employed twelve hundred people. He bought and sold 1.5 million barrels of oil each day—more than the daily average output of Kuwait. He ruled over a trading empire with an annual turnover of30 billion. The company earned anywhere from200 million to400 million in profits each year. Rich’s personal fortune was an estimated1 billion. As the
Financial Times
stated in almost reverential terms, Rich was “one of the wealthiest and most powerful commodities traders ever to have lived.” 2
    Not even