Status Updates From Metal Men: Marc Rich and th...

Sandy Weinberg made a conservative estimate of the amount Rich owed in back taxes: $96 million. Others on the defense team said that if they could get their hands on the Swiss documents, the figure might double, triple or maybe quadtuple. It was the largest known criminal scheme to avoid paying taxes in history.

Profits for the first five years of Rich’s operation were huge: $14 million for 1974, $50 million for 1975 and over $200 million for 1976 and 1978. Swiss tax records for 1979-80 indicated a total pretax bonanza of $367 million. And that was only the money for deals through Switzerland. Said former Zug Mayor Walter Hegglin of the Rich money machine: “‘As long as Marc is doing all right, Zug is doing all right.”

What separated our friendship was his belief that you could only make it bigger and better than the next guy by buying people off. Marc was suave and sophisticated and obsessed with power. He was always looking to see who he could buy off.”

Rich’s style drilled holes through whatever ethical constraints and business disciplines girdled the competition. ‘““The commodity business is the business of risk,” said a Rich trader to explain why his boss became the target of the largest tax evasion case in United States history

This was a man who fled to a safe haven in Switzerland just before being indicted in 1983 on more than fifty 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 Clinton issued in his last day as president.

But despite his wealth and power, there was one thing Rich could not do for the past seventeen years: set foot on U.S. soil. For Rich, until Bill Clinton granted him a presidential pardon in January 2001, was the most wanted white-collar fugitive in American history.