Marc Rich, the colourful and controversial commodities trader and founder of Glencore who fled the US to avoid federal indictments, has died in Switzerland aged 78.
“Marc Rich died in Lucerne in a hospital as a result of a brain stroke,” said Christian König of the Marc Rich Group in a statement. He is expected to be buried in Tel Aviv on Thursday.
Ivan Glasenberg, the chief executive of Glencore Xstrata, said: “We are saddened to hear of the death of Marc. He was a friend and one of the great pioneers of the commodities trading industry, founding the company that became Glencore. Our deepest sympathies and condolences are with his family at this time.”
Rich, born in Antwerp, Belgium, was an oil trader who fled to Switzerland in 1983 hours before being indicted on more than 50 charges of trading with Iran during an embargo, wire fraud, racketeering and evading more than $48m in income taxes – at the time the largest tax evasion case in US history.
He remained one of the US’s most wanted fugitives until Bill Clinton pardoned him on his last day as US president in January 2001. Mr Clinton said such cases should be settled in civil not criminal courts and also cited clemency pleas from Israeli officials, including Ehud Barak, the then prime minister.
Mr Clinton also pardoned Pincus Green, Rich’s business partner who had been indicted with him.
Clinton critics pointed to the large donations Rich’s then wife, Denise Eisenberg, had made to both the US Democratic party and the Clinton library.
Rich renounced his US citizenship and by the time he died, the lover of Cuban Cohiba cigars and Spanish red wine had Belgian, Israeli and Spanish passports.
His career began at Philipp Brothers, a metals dealer, in the early 1970s. He worked as a commodities trader for his father and then founded Marc Rich + Co in 1974, initially focusing on marketing ferrous and non-ferrous metals and minerals, and crude oil.
During the 1973-74 embargo on Arab oil he circumvented the restrictions, buying oil cheaply and selling it for almost double the price to US oil companies desperate for supplies.
Iran supplied Rich with oil for more than 15 years, both before and after the 1979 Islamic revolution. His clients included South Africa during the apartheid years and Israel.
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