Rich Is Poorer

By Stephen Koepp

A fugitive's $200 million debt

The check that U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani held aloft at a New York City press conference last week looked just like one that a homeowner might use to pay the gas bill. But to Giuliani and dozens of other federal investigators, their check was a prized hunting trophy. Made out to the United States of America and drawn on Chase Manhattan Bank, the check for $113,018,306.71, along with other payments, concluded a 13-month tax-fraud prosecution of two companies controlled by fugitive Commodities Broker Marc Rich. The total settlement of nearly $200 million, said Giuliani, "represents the largest amount of money ever recovered by the United States in a criminal tax-evasion case."

Clarendon Ltd., the American subsidiary of Swiss-based Marc Rich & Co. AG, pleaded guilty to generating at least $50 million in illegal oil profits during 1980 and 1981 and then dodging taxes on the money by transferring the earnings overseas. Last week's settlement will allow the two companies to resume operating in the U.S. But criminal charges of tax evasion, fraud and racketeering still stand against Rich and his partner, Pincus ("Pinky") Green. The two, both 50, fled from New York City to their headquarters in Zug, Switzerland, in September 1983, only a few weeks before federal investigators brought 51 separate charges against them.

Two years ago, the Belgian-born Rich controlled a group of companies from his New York office that annually traded some $10 billion worth of such commodities as oil, gold, aluminum, sulfur and sugar. But the FBI, apparently tipped off by a group of Texas oil traders, had begun looking into Rich's dealings and was soon joined by agents of the Treasury Department, Internal Revenue Service and Customs Service. Rich's often inept efforts to stonewall the probe took on a burlesque quality. His company refused to turn over documents to a grand jury, provoking $50,000-a-day contempt-of-court fines that messengers dutifully delivered to court each week. The payments eventually totaled $21 million.

In August 1983 the company tried to smuggle the contested documents out of the U.S. in two steamer trunks aboard a Swissair jet, but customs officers intercepted them at New York's Kennedy Airport after apparently being alerted by a mole in Rich's organization. At one point, in order to avoid court fines, Rich and Green hastily changed the name of their U.S. subsidiary from Marc Rich International to Clarendon and arranged a secret sale of the company to a shareholder in their Swiss firm.

Last week's settlement lifted the Government's yearlong freeze on Rich's U.S. assets. In return, the Swiss company paid back about $130 million that was owed to 14 U.S. and European banks. The agreement allowed another Rich firm to sell its 50% stake in TCP Holdings, the parent company of 20th Century-Fox. Rich, a secret partner with Denver Oilman Marvin Davis in the 1981 purchase of the film studio, sold his shares to Davis last week for a reported $116 million.

The highly publicized case sparked a diplomatic tug-of-war between officials in Washington and Bern. Because Switzerland's law forbids the divulging of business secrets, authorities there took a dim view of an American court fining a Swiss firm to obtain documents. In August 1983 Swiss officials descended on Rich's Zug offices and seized papers out of fear that the company would cave in to U.S. investigators.

Federal officials will probably never be able to put Rich and Green on trial. Swiss authorities refused last month to hand over the pair on the ground that a 1900 extradition treaty with the U.S. does not cover the fugitives' alleged crimes. A further difficulty is that Rich has renounced his American citizenship to become a Spaniard, and Green reportedly is now a Bolivian. The two are unlikely to return to the U.S. of their own accord. Prosecutor Giuliani has said he would accept no plea bargain from the traders unless it would "expose them to substantial prison terms."

Rich and Green apparently remain ensconced in their modern, blue-glass headquarters in the lakeside town of Zug (pop. 22,000). There the pair are regarded by some natives as folk heroes rather than accused felons. But it will take a long time to rebuild Marc Rich's globe-straddling commodities business. Many customers have reportedly shied away, as have some of the firm's skilled traders! Said one departed employee: "This company has gone through hell." Not to mention having just given up nearly $200 million.

-By Stephen Koepp. Reported by Robert Kroon/Bem and Adam Zagorin/New York

With reporting by Robert Kroon, Adam Zagorin