How Marc Rich Made A Fortune Getting Around Sanctions And Trading With Shadiest Characters In The World

Ho

w Marc Rich Made A Fortune Getting Around Sanctions And Trading With Shadiest Characters In The World

It is well know that Marc Rich, the late billionaire commodities fugitive and American exile, managed to trade with some of the most unsavory leaders in the world despite U.S. sanctions.
He died this morning, but in the 1970s (his heyday) he circumvented a ban on trading with Iran and managed to supply oil to Apartheid South Africa. He also found a way around Ronald Reagan's directive to stop trading with Muammar al-Qaddafi's Libya. The question is how?
The answer is complicated — think shell companies on paper and fixers on the ground. Think bribes.
Foreign Policy Magazine did an awesome profile of Glencore (as Rich's company, Marc Rich $ Co. AG, was renamed after he left) last year. It touches on how Rich did business in the bad old days before the company went public.
From FP:
An inveterate sanctions-buster, Rich used offshore front companies and corporate cutouts to try to stay below the radar. He also pioneered the practice of commodity swaps, like the uranium-for-oil deals he brokered in the 1980s between apartheid South Africa and Islamic Iran and Soviet Russia...
This is the heart of the Marc Rich formula: Access is money, and contacts on the ground mean access. The new Glencore, like the old one, relies on a network of fixers, middlemen, and business partners who might make other companies squeamish, among them the Uzbek-born oligarch Michael Cherney, now living in Israel and wanted by Interpol on a Spanish warrant connected to organized crime charges and with whom Glencore traded oil (through an offshore vehicle affiliated with Cherney) in Romania in the mid-2000s... In Congo-Brazzaville, to take another example, Glencore bought oil from shell companies set up by the state oil company's head, Denis Gokana (conveniently trained at its London office), according to a lawsuit by Kensington International, a Cayman Islands-based corporation.
When President Jimmy Carter put sanctions on Iran in 1979, for example, Rich was ready. A business associate immediate went to Iran to greet Ayatollah Khomeini, writer Daniel Amman said in his book detailing the deal, 'The King of Oil.
Khomeini and his lesser ayatollahs decided to respect the agreements made by the deposed Shah and so Rich was able to continue his work in Iran.
In an ABC interview with Amman he said, "We performed a service for them...We bought the oil, we handled the transport, and we sold it. They couldn't do it themselves, so we were able to do it."
Naturally, someone must be on the other side of any trade. In this case Rich was selling Iranian oil to Apartheid South Africa (getting around an embargo) and Israel (getting around an ancient feud).
More from the Amman interview: "They didn't care," Rich told me. "The professionals in the oil business in Iran didn't care. They just wanted to sell oil."
And sell they did, in part, using the spot market, which Rich himself perfected in the Middle East during the early 1970s. Essentially, instead of having a long-term contract with a buyer or seller, Rich would execute one-off trades through a thick layer of shell companies.
So not necessarily the kind of thing you can trade from your basement.

大宗商品枭雄马克•里奇去世

 

当年为躲避联邦起诉而逃离美国的嘉能可 (Glencore)创始人、富有传奇色彩又备受争议的大宗商品交易员马克•里奇(Marc Rich)在瑞士去世，享年78岁。

马克•里奇集团(Marc Rich Group)的克里斯汀•科尼格(Christian König)在一份声明中称：“马克•里奇因脑中风在瑞士卢塞恩的一家医院去世。”预计他将于周四被安葬在以色列的特拉维夫。
嘉能可-斯特拉塔(Glencore Xstrat)首席执行官伊凡•格拉森伯格(Ivan Glasenberg)表示：“听到马克去世的消息，我们感到难过。他是我们的朋友，也是大宗商品交易领域伟大的先驱之一，他一手创建了后来更名为嘉能可 的公司。在这个时刻，我们向他的家人表达最深切的同情和哀悼。”
里奇生于比利时的安特卫普，曾是一名石油交易员。1983年，他逃到瑞士，几个小时之后，他被控50余项罪名，包括在石油禁运期间与伊朗进 行交易、电信欺诈、诈骗以及逃避逾4800万美元所得税——当时这是美国历史上规模最大的逃税案。

他 曾是美国通缉的要犯，直到2001年1月比尔•克林顿( Bill Clinton)在总统任期的最后一天赦免了他。克林顿表示，这类案件应在民事法庭解决，而不是刑事法庭。他还提到，包括时任以色列总理埃胡德•巴拉克 (Ehud Barak)在内的以色列官员恳请对里奇宽大处理。

克林顿还赦免了一同被起诉的里奇的商业伙伴平卡斯•格林(Pincus Green)。
克林顿的批评者指出，里奇当时的妻子丹尼丝•艾森伯格(Denise Eisenberg)曾向美国民主党和克林顿图书馆捐赠大笔资金。
里奇放弃了他的美国公民身份。在他去世时，他拥有比利时、以色列和西班牙护照。他生前钟爱古巴Cohiba雪茄和西班牙红酒。
上世纪70年代初，他的事业起步于金属交易商Philipp Brothers。他曾为他的父亲担任大宗商品交易员，之后于1974年创建马克•里奇公司，最初主要是销售铁类和非铁金属、矿产和原油。
在1973年至1974年对阿拉伯实行石油禁运期间，他绕过禁令，廉价购买石油，并以 高出近一倍的价格卖给亟需供应的美国石油公司。
在1979年伊斯兰革命前后的15年间，伊朗一直为里奇供应石油。他的客户包括种族隔 离时期的南非，以及以色列。
1993年，公司管理层收购了里奇的股权，由此产生了嘉能可。
上世纪80年代，里奇开始涉足其他多个领域。1981年他与实业家马文•戴维斯(Marvin Davis)联手收购了20世纪福克斯(20th Century Fox)。在里奇逃离美国后，戴维斯于1984年以2.5亿美元的价格将里奇的股权出售给了鲁珀特•默多克(Rupert Murdoch)。
2012年，《福布斯》(Forbes)公布，里奇的资产净值为25亿美元。
1966年，里奇迎娶鞋业巨擘女继承人艾森伯格为妻。他们育有3位子女，1996年两人离婚。他还有两个女儿依奥娜•萨驰特•里奇 (Ilona Schachter-Rich)和黛尼埃尔•基尔斯托克•里奇(Danielle Kilstock Rich)在世。
里奇创办了多个基金会，包括Swiss Foundation for the Doron Prize和马克•里奇教育、文化和福利基金会(Marc Rich Foundation for Education, Culture and Welfare)。他还因慈善工作获得荣誉，包括巴伊兰大学(Bar-Ilan University)、本古里安大学(Ben-Gurion University)和特拉维夫大学(Tel Aviv University)的荣誉博士。