Marc Rich (born Marcell David Reich; December 18, 1934 – June 26, 2013) was an international commodities trader, financier, and businessman.

[1] He received a widely criticized presidential pardon from President Bill Clinton, on his last day in office; Rich's ex-wife Denise had made large donations to the Democratic Party.

[6] His father opened a jewelry store in Kansas City, Missouri, then moved the family to Queens, New York City in 1950, where he started a company that imported Bengali jute to make burlap bags,[7] and later started a business trading agricultural products and helped found the American Bolivian Bank (Banco Boliviano Americano S.A).

At Philipp Brothers, he eventually became a dealer in metals, learning about the international raw materials markets and commercial trading with poor, third world nations.

[7] In 1974, he and co-worker Pincus Green set up their own company in Switzerland, Marc Rich + Co. AG, which would later become Glencore Xstrata Plc.

[4][a] His tutelage under Philipp Brothers afforded Rich the opportunity to develop relationships with various dictatorial régimes and embargoed nations.

[14] He also counted Fidel Castro's Cuba, Marxist Angola, the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, Nicolae Ceaușescu's Romania, and Augusto Pinochet's Chile among the clients he serviced.

According to Forbes Magazine, Asadollah Asgaroladi was also the secret business partner of Rich in helping bypass U.S. sanctions against Iran after the Iranian revolution.

Davis was permitted by authorities to purchase Rich's holding and subsequently sold this to Rupert Murdoch for $232 million during March 1984.

[1] Rich had ties to many mafia associates in the Soviet Union and, subsequently, the former Soviet Union, such as the Georgian-Israeli Grigori Loutchansky who owns the Austrian-based oil exporting company Nordex and who was involved in the Iridium satellite constellation,[b][c] and especially in the Russian Mafia, such as Marat Balagula, who was convicted of gasoline price fixing.

[27] In 1983, Rich and partner Pincus Green were indicted on 65 criminal counts, including income tax evasion, wire fraud, racketeering, and trading with Iran during the oil embargo (at a time when Iranian revolutionaries were still holding American citizens hostage).

[32] Clinton also cited clemency pleas he had received from Israeli government officials, including then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

He stated in an interview with The New York Times that "Israeli officials of both major political parties and leaders of Jewish communities in America and Europe urged the pardon of Mr.

[33][34][44] Azulay was also the one who asked Ehud Barak, whom he knew through his prior work at Mossad, to appeal to President Clinton on behalf of Rich for clemency.

[34] A former Mossad chief, Shabtai Shavit, had also urged Clinton to pardon Rich,[45] who he said had routinely allowed intelligence agents to use his offices around the world.

[28] Federal Prosecutor Mary Jo White was appointed by Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate Clinton's last-minute pardon of Rich.

Clinton's top advisors, Chief of Staff John Podesta, White House Counsel Beth Nolan, and advisor Bruce Lindsey, testified that nearly all of the White House staff advising the president on the pardon request had urged Clinton to not grant Rich a pardon.

[45] As a condition of the pardon, it was made clear that Rich would drop all procedural defenses against any civil actions brought against him by the United States upon his return there.

[12] In a February 18, 2001, op-ed essay in The New York Times, Clinton (by then out of office) explained why he had pardoned Rich, noting that U.S. tax professors Bernard Wolfman of the Harvard Law School and Martin Ginsburg of Georgetown University Law Center had concluded that no crime had been committed, and that Rich's companies' tax-reporting position had been reasonable.

[30] In the same essay, Clinton listed Lewis "Scooter" Libby as one of three "distinguished Republican lawyers" who supported a pardon for Rich.

[52] On November 5, 2017, the Paradise Papers, a set of confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investment, revealed that the Appleby law firm had worked for Rich and Glencore on major projects in the past, even after his indictment in 1983.

Rich was also an advocate for coexistence between Israelis and the Palestinians by establishing health and education programs in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as by fulfilling his commitment to making President's Conference contributions each year.

[73] The fund was established by Avner Azulay, with help from Rich's ex-wife Denise and his business partners, Elka Acle and Pincus Green.

[citation needed] Rich married Denise Eisenberg, a songwriter and heir to a New England shoe manufacturing fortune, in 1966.