The cause was a stroke, his spokesman said.
Mr. Rich escaped the Holocaust with his parents and became one of history’s most successful commodity traders, a billionaire who cornered the market for aluminum, silver and zinc and promoted a spot market for oil outside the control of the international petroleum giants.
Nicknamed El Matador for his steel nerves and razor-sharp acumen, Mr. Rich pushed the limits of legality and, the government said, broke them. In 1983 he was indicted on 65 criminal counts that included tax fraud and trading with Iran when it was holding American hostages.
One of the most serious allegations was that Mr. Rich had misrepresented the provenance of crude oil he sold in 1980 and 1981. Under complicated regulations then in place, newly found oil fetched a higher price than older oil. By illegally marking up the price of old oil and passing it through a bewildering chain of transactions, Mr. Rich sold oil at a markup of up to 400 percent. He was accused of making more than $100 million from the scheme, avoiding paying $48 million in United States taxes.
Mr. Rich paid the government about $200 million in civil penalties but fled to Switzerland to escape criminal prosecution. The Internal Revenue Service offered a $500,000 reward for his capture, and the F.B.I. put him on its “most wanted” list, along with Osama bin Laden. Even as he remained the world’s biggest trader of metals and minerals and lived in opulence, he was called the world’s most famous fugitive.
Then, on Jan. 20, 2001 — Mr. Clinton’s last day in office — Mr. Rich’s name appeared on the presidential pardon list. It immediately became the most debated White House pardon since President Gerald R. Ford gave one to Richard M. Nixon in 1974, and speculation about Mr. Clinton’s motivation was rampant.
It was soon learned that Mr. Rich’s former wife, Denise Rich, had made large donations to the Democratic Party and the Clinton library, and that Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Ehud Barak, had lobbied Mr. Clinton for the pardon. Rabbi Irving Greenberg, chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, also pressed Mr. Rich’s case, on museum stationery.
Shabtai Shavit, a former head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, expressed gratitude to Mr. Rich for routinely allowing agents to use his offices around the world and for financing airlifts of Jews from Ethiopia, Yemen and other countries. King Juan Carlos I of Spain also weighed in on Mr. Rich’s behalf.
Eric H. Holder Jr., then the deputy attorney general and now the attorney general, advised the White House that he was “neutral leaning favorable” to the pardon. Only weeks later, however, Mr. Holder said he regretted the recommendation.
Mr. Clinton later quoted respected tax experts he had recruited who concluded that no crime had been committed and that the tax-reporting tactics of Mr. Rich and his corporation had been reasonable. But Mr. Clinton, too, came to have regrets, calling the pardon “terrible politics.”
Mr. Rich never returned to the United States, nor did American agents succeed in several attempts to seize him and bring him back. A diplomatic technicality thwarted his effort to renounce his American citizenship, but he did attain Belgian, Spanish and Israeli citizenships.
He was born Marcell David Reich on Dec. 18, 1934, in Antwerp, Belgium, where his father eked out a living peddling factory discards door to door. In the early 1940s, the family moved to the United States, settling in Kansas City, Mo., where they opened a jewelry store. They also changed their surname to the more American-sounding Rich. In 1950, they moved to Queens, and Mr. Rich’s father, David, started a factory to make burlap bags.
Mr. Rich attended the private Rhodes School in Manhattan. His preferred languages were French, German and Yiddish. Calvin Trillin, the author, wrote that he once shared a tent in a summer camp in the Ozarks with Mr. Rich, whom he characterized as the camp’s “quietest kid.”
Mark Scott contributed reporting.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/27/business/marc-rich-pardoned-financier-dies-at-78.html?partner=rss&emc=rss