The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich

ex-wife. She wants to help him, too. If your ex-wife wants to help you, that’s good.”
    “Oh,” Barak said. “I know his new wife only, an Italian woman, very young. Okay. So, Mr. President, thank you very much. We will be in touch.”
    Azulay had known Ehud Barak well for quite some time. They had served in the same unit together—the Aman, Israel’s Directorate of Military Intelligence, which Barak had directed from 1983 to 1985. Barak, Israel’s most highly decorated soldier, was active in Lebanon at the same time as Azulay. In November 2000 Azulay asked Barak for his support in obtaining Rich’s pardon. “Ehud Barak knew this was an honest request and that I would not lie to him or ask or do anything which would compromise him,” Azulay explained. The former Mossad officer told Barak that Rich had supplied Israel with oil in its most difficult times (see chapter 8 ) and was thus of great importance to Israel’s national security. Azulay also explained how Rich had helped the Mossad (see chapter 15 ). After Barak had verified this information with the Mossad, he told Azulay, “This man had done nothing but good for this country. Why should I not support him?”
Financier of the Peace Process
     
    Azulay proceeded in a similar manner with Shimon Peres, the former prime minister and foreign minister. He asked Peres to give President Clinton a call. “You remember,” Azulay reminded Peres, “you asked us for Marc Rich’s help in the peace process.” He was referring to the Oslo Accords of 1993–94, which had offered a major breakthrough in relations between Israel and the Palestinians when both parties agreed to officially recognize one another for the first time. The accords alsoenvisaged a plan for Palestinian self-government. During the negotiation process, Peres approached Azulay, who at that time was already serving as the managing director of the philanthropic Marc Rich Foundation. Thanks to his work with the Mossad, Azulay was personally acquainted with both the Israeli and Palestinian participants. “Peres asked me, ‘What can you do to help this process?’ ” Azulay explained.
    Azulay informed him that Rich had come up with the idea of financing a Palestinian investment bank in order to speed up the economic development of the Palestinian areas. He also suggested developing the border area shared by Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian West Bank for tourism. Azulay discussed these plans in Jerusalem and Ramallah with the Palestinian economic expert Ahmed Qurei (who would later serve as “prime minister” of the Palestinian Authority). A group of Palestinians, including an economic adviser for Yasser Arafat, traveled to Zug to meet with Rich in 1994, a meeting that until now has remained a secret. “We discussed how Marc could help them,” Azulay said. A further suggestion was made that Rich assist in training programs for the Palestinian Authority. Rich was prepared to invest1 million to help train executive members of staff in the areas of education and social welfare.
    “I was willing to do anything they needed,” Rich told me. “ ‘Define your needs,’ I urged the Palestinians, ‘come back to me, and tell me what I can do.’ ” Yet he waited in vain for concrete suggestions to make their way back to him. He heard nothing more from the Palestinians, who in the meantime had succumbed to a bitter internal power struggle. Thus the Marc Rich Foundation developed its own series of plans for various projects, mainly in the area of establishing a public administration service to manage the international funds and donations as well as health services, which the foundation would later finance to the tune of several million dollars in cooperation with the World Bank.
    It was these projects that prompted Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami to intercede on Rich’s behalf. Ben-Ami wrote a letter on official Foreign Ministry paper to President Clinton, stating that Rich’s foundation “was among the first private entities to support the Oslo Accords bysponsoring education and health programs in Gaza and the West Bank in cooperation with the Palestinian Authority. Many of these projects of people to people between Israelis and Palestinians would not have been possible without Marc Rich’s generous involvement.” 10 Sidney Blumenthal, President Clinton’s brilliant senior adviser, was not far from the truth when he wrote in his book
The Clinton Wars
, “In short, Rich was a financier