CITY, FED PROBES EYE PARDONGATE BILLIONAIRE AS A 'MAJOR PLAYER' IN SADDAM'S
SCAM
By NILES LATHEM
December 13, 2004 -- POST WORLD EXCLUSIVE
WASHINGTON — Billionaire Marc Rich has emerged as a central figure in the
U.N. oil-for-food scandal and is under investigation for brokering deals in
which scores of international politicians and businessmen cashed in on
sweetheart oil deals with Saddam Hussein, The Post has learned.
Rich, the fugitive Swiss-based commodities trader who received a controversial
pardon from President Bill Clinton in January 2001, is a primary target of
criminal probes under way in the U.S. attorney's office in New York and by
Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, sources said.
"We think he was a major player in this — a central figure," a senior
law-enforcement official told The Post.
Investigators are looking into a series of deals that took place in the months
after his pardon from Clinton. If criminal wrongdoing is established in these
deals, he could be subject to prosecution.
Investigators say they have received information that Rich and Ben Pollner, a
New York-based oil trader who heads Taurus Oil, set up a series of companies in
Liechtenstein and other countries that they used to put together deals between
Saddam and his international supporters in the controversial oil-voucher scheme
— which the dictator designed to win international support against U.S.
sanctions at the United Nations.
Under the scam, hundreds of international political and financial figures from
France, Russia and other countries were awarded middleman vouchers allowing
them to purchase set quantities of Iraqi oil at discount rates.
These so-called "non-end users" could then resell the oil on the open market
and make profits of up to 50 cents a barrel. Benon Sevan, who headed the U.N.
oil-for-food program, is among those listed in Iraqi Oil Ministry documents as
having been a recipient of the vouchers.
Since most of the recipients did not have refineries or cargo ships, they
needed to sell the oil to someone else who could ship the oil out of Iraq in
order to cash in.
Investigators now believe Rich and Pollner brokered many of the deals by
finding buyers for the oil allocated to people who were bribed by Saddam. The
discount Iraqi oil would be resold to major oil companies at higher prices and
Rich and Pollner would pocket percentages of the profits, worth hundreds of
millions of dollars, sources said.
"To make this work, they needed someone who knows what he's doing and how to
put these deals together," the senior law-enforcement official said of Rich's
role in the scandal.
So intense is the interest of prosecutors in the Rich connection that Pollner
was recently "grabbed" and questioned by investigators from Morgenthau's office
as he was on his way to Kennedy Airport for an overseas trip, a law-enforcement
official told The Post.
In an angry confrontation that followed, Pollner told the New York
investigators that they had no jurisdiction over oil deals that took place
outside the United States and refused to cooperate, an official familiar with
the interrogation said.
Pollner and Rich could not be reached for comment.
The Rich connection is the latest wrinkle in a rapidly mushrooming scandal that
has thrown the United Nations into its gravest crisis and has led to numerous
calls for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to step down.
Rich, who fled the country to Switzerland in 1983 to escape an indictment for
racketeering and tax evasion as well as trading oil with Ayatollah Khomeini's
Iran, has not set foot inside the United States since his pardon.
In January 2001, in the final hours his presidency, Clinton bypassed
law-enforcement and intelligence agencies to wipe the books clean for Rich
after being subjected to intense lobbying from former Israel Prime Minister
Ehud Barak and Rich's jet-setting ex-wife, Denise, who donated more than $1
million to Democratic campaigns — including Sen. Hillary Rodham's first
Senate race — along with an additional $450,000 to Clinton's library fund.
Investigators still do not know how recipients of the vouchers led to Rich, but
say his relationship with Saddam goes back more than a decade.
A report by the House Government Reform Committee on Rich's clemency deal
established that it was well known to the CIA and other U.S. law-enforcement
agencies at the time of the pardon that Rich had been dealing with Saddam since
the early 1990s — after the Persian Gulf War when Iraq was the subject of an
international embargo.
The report, which relied on several classified briefings by the CIA, said Rich
loaned money to the cash-strapped dictator in exchange for favorable treatment
on oil prices at a later time.
An internal U.N. document dated June 1992, released to The Post by the House
International Relations Committee, also revealed that U.N. officials were
concerned about Rich's involvement in an earlier attempt to launch the
oil-for-food program.
The U.N. document said Rich was involved in a possible "triangular arms-for-oil
deal involving Chile, Iraq and South Africa," as well as illegally exporting
Iraqi oil through Syria, and expressed concern that his inclusion on a U.N.
list of approved oil traders would be "inappropriate" and would open the United
Nations up to criticism that "criteria and standards used to select suitable
companies are too lax."
Law-enforcement officials said the primary interest of current grand-jury
probes taking place in New York focus on Rich's oil deals with Saddam that took
place after his pardon, which could make him fair game for a new round of
indictments.
Some of the deals took place in February 2001 — one month after he received
his pardon.
Of particular interest to investigators is a series of deals outlined in
recently released Iraqi Oil Ministry documents that show allocations of more
than 72 million barrels of oil to a French oil trader Patrick Maugein.
Maugein, an oil trader, is a longtime business associate of Rich and
oil-trading firm Trafigura and has also been identified as a close friend of
French President Jacques Chirac. A report in October by CIA weapons inspector
Charles Duelfer said members of Saddam's regime "considered Maugein a conduit
to Chirac."
Investigators are also looking at Rich's fingerprints on several oil deals
involving Russian political figures and businessmen. Rich has longstanding ties
in Russia and has done several questionable commodities deals with Russian
mafia figures and oligarchs, who seized control of vast Russian financial and
natural resources after the collapse of the Soviet Union, sources said.
Several major American oil companies, including Chevron Texaco and Exxon Mobil,
have also received grand-jury subpoenas.
.
|
|
| User: "Michael Johnathan McDonald" |
|
| Title: Re: Clinton's guy a major player in Saddam's scam |
13 Dec 2004 12:24:54 PM |
|
|
Try Linking your articles.
.
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
