1934

Swindler

From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, Marc Rich managed to make billions of dollars by trading commodities such as oil and metals. Through a technique called “daisy chaining,” he and his associates bought and resold oil in different markets at great profits, bypassing U.S. oil price controls. He avoided paying millions of dollars in taxes by hiding his earnings from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). In 1980, during a hostage crisis in which Americans were held by Iranian militants at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Rich illegally traded with Iran’s government. Accused of tax evasion and other charges in 1983, he fled to Switzerland, where he enjoyed protection from extradition (being surrendered to another nation). At his corporate offices in Zug, Switzerland, he disregarded a U.S. court order demanding that he turn over his business records. The case...