Former fugitive 'King of Commodities' Marc Rich dies in Switzerland
Marc Rich, the trader known as the "King of Commodities" whose controversial 2001 pardon by US President Bill Clinton just hours before Clinton left office unleashed a political firestorm, died yesterday. He was 78.
Marc Rich
1934-2013
Billionaire Marc Rich, who invented modern oil trading and was pardoned by President Bill Clinton over tax evasion, racketeering and busting sanctions with Iran, died on Wednesday in Switzerland aged 78.
Rich fled the Holocaust with his parents for America to become the most successful and controversial trader of his time and a fugitive from US justice, enjoying decades of comfortable privacy at his sprawling Villa Rosa on Lake Lucerne.
Belgian-born Rich, whose trading group eventually became the global commodities powerhouse Glencore Xstrata, died in hospital from a stroke, spokesman Christian Koenig said. He is survived by two daughters and six grandchildren. A third daughter died previously of leukemia.
“He will be brought to Israel for burial,” Avner Azulay, managing director of the Marc Rich Foundation, said by telephone. Rich will be buried on Thursday at Kibbutz Einat cemetery near Tel Aviv.
Many of the biggest players in oil and metals trading trace their roots back to the swashbuckling Rich, whose triumph in the 1970s was to pioneer a spot market for crude oil, wresting business away from the world’s big oil groups.