The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich

certain things about Denise, and I met Gisela, whom I liked.” Could he not accept the fact that Denise was often away pursuing her songwriting career? “She spent a lot of time with her music, that’s true, and she had certain characteristics which bothered me. She is always late, always. Still.”
    After two years of struggle, Denise finally gave up. The two legally separated, and Denise returned to the United States. She filed for a divorce in April 1992. Denise chose to have the trial in Switzerland, as she knew that according to Swiss law she might be entitled to half of the fortune that her husband had accumulated during their marriage. She hired the aggressive lawyer Max Lebedkin to represent her in court. Lebedkin was known for doing whatever was necessary to make sure the wives of rich men came away rich from their divorces. As was usually true when he was involved, the Riches’ divorce escalated into an all-out struggle. It would be one of the bitterest, most expensive, and most public divorce trials the world had ever seen.
    Lebedkin sought a settlement of around half a billion dollars. 3 The crafty lawyer claimed that Denise and her parents had put up a substantial amount of the seed capital that Rich had needed when he had founded his company in 1974. She had supported her husband for over twenty years and had given birth to his three daughters. Thus, Lebedkin argued, Denise had a right to half of her husband’s fortune, which amounted to “at least”1 billion. According to
Forbes
, Rich was worth at that time approximately800 million, whereas
Fortune
put the sum at1.1 billion. Only hours after receiving Denise’s claim, Rich’s lawyers came up with a counteroffer:3.33 million in cash on the spot. 4 Perhaps Rich thought he could deal with the marriage as if it were just another trade. “Marc is actually a generous person, but his reaction in this case was rather strange,” a friend of Rich’s said. “The offer was an insult.”
“Marc Destroyed Our Family”
     
    Denise also took the counteroffer as an insult, and she soon hit back as hard as a humiliated wife can. She agreed to an extensive interview with one of Switzerland’s most widely read gossip magazines. 5 When the magazine hit the streets, the divorce proceedings went dirty. Theinterview was entitled “I Want Half of My Husband’s Billions.” In it Denise stated, “Marc Rich destroyed our family. I was a very loyal wife and devoted mother for twenty-five years. We all suffered from the scandals and the insults. People gossiped about my husband. They said he was a criminal. But I stood by him. Now he shows his gratitude by cheating on me with another woman and by publicly embarrassing both me and my children.” Denise had never spoken so negatively of Marc, and she would never do so again. Her words reflected not only the anger of a deeply wounded spouse but also the tactics of her aggressive lawyer. Lebedkin had found the exact means of doing the maximum possible damage to Rich. As a weapon Lebedkin chose what Marc Rich feared most: publicity. “He constantly lied when it came to his finances and his fortune,” Denise told the gossip magazine. “While we were still together he always wanted to impress me and everyone else with his enormous wealth. The only thing that has changed is that he still wants to impress everyone with his fabulous fortune, but now he wants me to believe that the reality is somewhat different.”
    Neither party in the proceedings was squeamish in its choice of methods. Denise sued her husband in both Switzerland and New York. She claimed that he had taken advantage of her twice. In 1988, back when the marriage was a happy one, the two had decided to establish a charitable foundation in Switzerland. Both partners planned to donate40 million of their own money to the foundation, which Denise did. 6 Denise claimed, however, that her husband had never contributed his share. This claim was rejected by the court in Zug. In New York Denise filed a civil suit against her husband and his business partners. She accused them of using the money in a trust fund, which was intended for their three daughters, for their own ends by means of “self-dealing” and “fraudulent transactions.” 7 According to court documents, she claimed her husband had attempted to “defraud me in the most vicious and disgusting manner.” She lost at trial.
365 Million for Denise
     
    Rich’s company was a confusing network of