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http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook502.htm Metal Men: Marc Rich and the $10 Billion Scam by A. Craig Copetas "HOW did Marc Rich make over 10 billion dollars and pay so little in taxes? Journalist A. Craig Copetas has infiltrated the inner circle of the commodities market and Rich's associates to show not only how Rich pulled off the scam, becoming one of America's most wanted criminals, but also how other traders have used the same model to evade taxes as well. Currently the center of yet another great controversy, Rich was wanted for evading almost 90 million dollars in taxes and if caught, would have to potentially serve a jail term of over 300 years. METAL MEN is the story of international intrigue spanning the globe from the inside of the White House to the Kremlin. Copetas has written a brilliantly researched work that exposes the inner workings of one of country's largest scams ... A commodity trader with a Midas touch, Mr. Rich from the late 1970s until the present ran a multibillion-dollar empire that stretched from Russian nickel mines through Malaysian tin deposits and into trading rooms in London, Hong Kong and New York. He owned a fleet of oil tankers, counted Henry Kissinger and Placido Domingo as his friends, and married the heiress to the Florsheim shoe fortune. He had a $9.5 million home along Spain's Costa Brava and maintained equally lavish residences in Switzerland and Israel. Mr. Rich purchased Picassos and grain silos, scooped up Hollywood studio 20th Century-Fox at one point and helped bankroll everything from the Jamaican Olympic team to the Rhodes prep school in Manhattan. Although his personal wealth is a closely guarded secret, Mr. Rich is routinely estimated to have a net worth in excess of $1 billion ... But despite his wealth and power, there was one thing Mr. Rich could not do for the past 17 years: set foot on U.S. soil. For Mr. Rich, until Bill Clinton granted him a presidential pardon, was the most wanted white-collar fugitive in American history. This was a man who fled to a safe haven in Switzerland just before being indicted in 1983 on more than 50 counts of wire fraud, racketeering, trading with Iran despite a trade embargo and evading more than $48 million in U.S. income taxes. Today, he is free to return to America, his past record forever cleansed of legal stain by the pardon Mr. Clinton issued in his last day as president. The pardon has drawn sharp criticism. Former U.S. Justice Department officials have characterized it as 'outrageous' and 'disgusting.' ... This is his story. The son of a poor Jewish scrap-metal trader in Antwerp, Belgium, Mr. Rich was born as Marc Reichon Dec. 18, 1934 ... During one of his many trips back to headquarters in New York each year, he met Denise Joy Eisenberg, the heir to the Florsheim fortune. They were married in 1966, but there was no question of settling down. In 1967, Phillip Brothers transferred Mr. Rich to Madrid along with a fellow trader, Pincus "Pinky" Green, an orthodox Jew whose dirty shirts and sneakers contrasted with Mr. Rich's elegant suits and trademark flashy neckties. Together, they developed a system that allowed Philipp Brothers to bypass the major oil companies, the "Seven Sisters" who then controlled the world's oil supplies. They had invented spot oil trading ... In November 1973, Messrs. Rich and Green walked away from
Philipp Brothers and started Marc Rich AG, the Swiss trading
company that would become the cornerstone of Mr. Rich's
empire. The company that was financed through a $2 million
loan arranged by Rich's father through a Bolivian bank and a
$1 million cash injection by Jacques Hacheul, a
Philipp Brothers trader [and also Jewish] who had
joined them in the mutiny."
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David Irving