The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich

answered when I wanted to know what his fortune meant to him, “but it also means that I can help the less fortunate through my foundations. It’s moving and utterly satisfying to see the effects of a school or hospital in a deprived area or to help along young gifted artists, especially in the field of music.” What is he most proud of when it comes to his philanthropy? “The money has an effect and is not wasted.”
    Rich’s “extraordinary” charity was one of the arguments that was used in his pardon application. 7 His critics maintain that Rich became involved in philanthropy only in order to help save his reputation. “Even the good things Marc does are used against him. That really hurts,” Avner Azulay told me. He then mentioned that Rich’s first foundation was active as early as 1979—long before the indictment. “We couldn’t know then,” Azulay said sarcastically, “that decades later a President Bill Clinton would pardon him.”

 

     

The
PARDON
     

    O
n Friday, January 19, 2001, Jack Quinn was at a dinner party in Washington, D.C., when his mobile phone rang. It was only shortly past nine, but when Quinn looked at the display to see who was calling he knew the party was over for him. It was “POTUS”—the president of the United States. It was Bill Clinton’s last night in the White House, and the president wanted to speak with Quinn about the pardon application that Quinn had submitted a month ago for his clients Marc Rich and Pincus Green.
    “The president had obviously read and studied the petition,” Quinn told me. He excused himself from the dinner table and made his way to an empty room. He and the president knew each other well, as Quinn had served as Clinton’s White House counsel. The conversation lasted around twenty minutes. “It was a good, thorough discussion that was entirely about the merits [of the pardon], not about the politics,” Quinn remembers. As he listened to the president speak, the words seemed to course through him like a jolt of electricity. “I persuaded the president,” he thought. “I persuaded the president that this was a case that should have been handled civilly rather than criminally.” On that evening it was clear that Clinton was seriously considering pardoning Rich andGreen. However, the president had one precondition, and that was why he had called Quinn. Rich and Green would have to agree to face a civil hearing and waive their rights to avail themselves of the statute of limitations. Quinn immediately accepted the president’s terms. Clinton wanted to have a written waiver “within one hour.”
    Quinn looked at his watch. It was 9:30 P.M . He immediately called Robert Fink, Rich’s lawyer in New York, explained the situation, and asked him to write up a waiver for Rich and Green in accordance with the president’s request. Fink was surprised. He had no longer expected a presidential pardon to come through. “We had no indication,” Fink later told me. He immediately sat down at the table and typed up a waiver declaration for the president on his wife’s laptop. About thirty minutes later, Fink unplugged the laptop so that he could go into the next room and print the document. The screen immediately went black. Fink had not known that his wife had removed the battery from her laptop.
    “Oh my God,” Fink exclaimed. “I lost it.” He had not even bothered to save the document. He hurriedly plugged in the laptop, rebooted, and began typing a much shorter letter. The hour that the president had given him had nearly run out. Fink printed the waiver and reread what he had written. “Specifically they will not raise the statute of limitations or any other defenses which arose as a result of their absense.” A spelling mistake! Fink had written “absense” instead of “absence.” There was no longer any time to correct the mistake—a fact that still bothers him to this day. He faxed the letter as quickly as possible and nervously awaited the transmission confirmation. Nothing happened. He faxed the letter again, and this time the fax went through. Fink took a deep breath. Marc Rich had nearly missed his opportunity for a presidential pardon because of something as mundane as a missing laptop battery.
    “Nothing else can go wrong,” Fink thought to himself and went to bed. At 2:00 A.M . he got a second call from Quinn. Beth Nolan, Clinton’s White House counsel, had asked him if Rich had been involved in armstrading,