Marc Rich

Marc Rich was an international commodities trader, hedge fund manager, financier, and businessman. He founded the commodities company Glencore, and was later indicted in the United States on federal charges of tax evasion and making oil deals with Iran during the Iran hostage crisis. He received a widely criticised presidential pardon from U.S. President Bill Clinton on January 20, 2001, Clinton’s last day in office. He died in 2012 in Switzerland, where he had been living since the early 1980s.

About Marc Rich in brief

Summary Marc RichMarc Rich was an international commodities trader, hedge fund manager, financier, and businessman. He founded the commodities company Glencore, and was later indicted in the United States on federal charges of tax evasion and making oil deals with Iran during the Iran hostage crisis. He received a widely criticised presidential pardon from U.S. President Bill Clinton on January 20, 2001, Clinton’s last day in office; Rich had made large donations in his lifetime to the Democratic Party and Israeli organizations. Rich has been said to have expanded the spot market for crude oil in the early 1970s, drawing business away from the larger established oil companies. Rich sold Iranian oil to Israel through a secret pipeline. His real estate company, Marc Rich Real Estate GmbH, was involved in large developer projects. Rich and Marvin Davis bought 20th Century Fox in 1981. Rich was permitted by authorities to purchase this to Rupert Murdoch for USD 232 million during March 1984. Rich had ties to many mafia associates in the Soviet Union and, subsequently as the Austrian-Israelli Grigori Loutchansky who owns the Nordex-based company Nordex. The Business Insider Business Insider reported Rich had an estimated net worth of US$2.5 billion in 2013. In 1983, Rich and partner Pincus Green were indicted on 65 criminal counts, including income evasion, wire fraud, racketeering, and trading with Iran.

The charges would have led to a more than 300 years in prison for Rich, who would have been sentenced to more than 30 years. Rich would later tell biographer Daniel Ammann that he had made his most important and most profitable business deals by violating international trade embargoes and doing business with the apartheid regime of South Africa. He also counted Fidel Castro’s Cuba, Marxist Angola, the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, Nicolae Ceau�’escu’s Romania, and Augusto Pinochet’s Chile among the clients he serviced. According to Ammann, \”he had no regrets whatsoever…. He used to say ‘I deliver a service. People want to sell oil to me and other people wanted to buy oil from me. I am a businessman, not a politician.  I am a business man.’” Rich died in 2011 at the age of 80. He is survived by his wife, three children, and two step-daughters. He was buried in a private ceremony in New York City, New York, on December 11, 2011. He had a son and a daughter with his wife. He died in 2012 in Switzerland, where he had been living since the early 1980s. Rich is buried in the same cemetery as his late wife, Barbara Rich, a former co-worker and business partner at Philipp Brothers, which would later become Glencore Xstrata Plc. Rich also has a son with his second wife, Susan Rich, and a step-daughter with whom he had a daughter, Victoria Rich.