The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich

Denise when his daughter died. I thought it was important to ask how he and the family had dealt with the loss.
    Gabrielle was not alone during her final hours. Her family—including Philip Aouad, whom Gabrielle had secretly married—was sitting with her in the hospital room. Her mother, Denise, who had already lost her own mother and sister to cancer; Ilona, Gabrielle’s older sister; and her younger sister, Danielle, were all there. Her father, however, was not—at least not physically. After the doctors had diagnosed Gabrielle’s leukemia, the family scoured the globe for the best doctors available. “They found them in the United States,” Danielle says. “My father supported this choice even though it was very painful for him not to be able to be with Gabrielle.” Rich could only sit in his house on Switzerland’s Lake Lucerne and speak to his dying daughter in Seattle by telephone. “He was on the phone up until she took her last breath,” Denise explains. “He was with her just as we were, and he couldn’t be there. The fact that he could not be there with his daughter was horrific. He was just sobbing on the phone. I finally hung up the phone because he was sobbing so much and I couldn’t take it. I wanted to hold her.” Shortly past ten o’clock on that very same evening, Gabrielle passed away.
“Don’t Come Home, Daddy, Please”
     
    Whoever among his family or acquaintances is asked the single most difficult aspect of the prosecution against Marc Rich gives the same answer: the fact that he was not allowed to travel to the United States inorder to see his daughter and hold her in his arms when she needed him most. “The death of a daughter is tragic enough, but on top of that, if you are not able to be there—even though you are so rich and powerful—then what does all that power and money mean?” Isaac Querub asked me. He is one of Rich’s trusted associates and a friend who has three daughters of his own. Another friend, the businessman Michael Steinhardt, was Rich’s houseguest in the town of Meggen during those sad days. “It was such a tragedy for him not being with Gabrielle. He had very strong feelings for her. She was—and still is—an important part of his life,” Steinhardt told me. “You just mention her name and he starts crying,” Danielle says.
    There is nothing Marc Rich would rather have done than visit his daughter in the hospital. Robert Fink, Rich’s longtime lawyer in Manhattan, discussed the issue with Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. “I told him Rich’s daughter was dying,” Fink remembers. “I asked him if there was a way Marc could be allowed to visit his daughter without jeopardy.” The answer was no.
    Thirteen years had passed since Rich had fled the United States, and for thirteen years he had managed to avoid falling into the traps that U.S. agents had set for him. Rich knew that if he wanted to see his daughter one last time, he would be arrested the moment he stepped off the airplane in the United States. “Then so be it,” Rich said to himself. It was worth it. He called Gabrielle. “He said to Gabrielle, ‘I’ll come,’ ” Danielle tells me in her mother’s apartment. “Gabrielle told him, ‘Please, I beg you, don’t come. I beg you, don’t come home.’ He said, ‘I will, I will.’ She said, ‘Please, Daddy, I love you so much. Please don’t come. If you do this I will be so angry with you.’ ” Denise had to promise her terminally ill daughter that she would make sure her father stayed in Switzerland. “He was prepared to take any consequences,” Danielle says.
    With the heaviest of hearts, Rich decided against traveling to the United States. He stayed in Switzerland and missed his daughter’s funeral. Rich’s friends still tell each other how agents attended the funeral in the event Rich did decide to come. The U.S. marshals who weretasked with apprehending Rich were convinced that he might try to secretly travel to the United States via Canada.
     
    “Sure. It’s very sad,” said Sandy Weinberg, the assistant U.S. attorney who had initiated the investigation into Rich. He seemed irritated that I had asked him if it would have been a humanitarian gesture to grant Rich safe conduct. “It’s kind of hard to feel sorry for him. He created the situation. Safe conduct? It doesn’t work like that. He chose not to play by the rules,” Weinberg explained. He is probably right—those were the rules.