Marc Rich Tied to U.N. Oil for Food Scandal (NewsMax)

NewsMax ^ | 4-29-04 | Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff

[jmstein7]

Clinton-pardoned fugitive billionaire Marc Rich has turned up in the middle of the United Nations Oil for Food scandal, with his name on a roster of companies authorized to participated in the corruption-plagued arrangement.

"One of Marc Rich's companies was on the United Nations list that was approved to trade and transport Iraqi oil," Fox News Channel's Eric Shawn reported Tuesday.

"And it appears that Mr. Rich's firm, Marc Rich & Co. Investments AG, may well have been given that approval by the UN before the presidential pardon," Shawn added.

That means the U.N. was ready to do business with America's most wanted white collar criminal, while other program participants were busily stuffing their pockets with Saddam Hussein's kickbacks.

Thomas Frutig, CEO of Marc Rich Holdings, denied the allegation, telling Fox, "We were not involved in the Oil for Food program."

But in the next breath he added, "Every oil company which wasn't trading applied for an authorization to trade, but I can't tell you how much we did, or whether we did anything."

Rich had previously gotten into trouble over allegations he traded oil with Iran at a time when Tehran was on the U.S. embargo list as a state sponsor of terrorism.

[texasbluebell]

You got it.

[kcvl]

(Marc) Rich linked to money laundering

Washington Times ^ | 6/21/02 | P.K. Semler


MILAN, Italy — European prosecutors say that documents identifying Marc Rich — the American fugitive who won an 11th-hour pardon from President Clinton — have turned up during a crackdown on money laundering and the Russian mafia.

While Mr. Rich has not been named as a suspect, prosecutors do not rule out issuing a subpoena or even an arrest warrant for him as their investigation develops.

Magistrates in Bologna said Mr. Rich's name and companies with whom he has been affiliated repeatedly surfaced during "Operation Spiderweb," which was carried out last week by Swiss and European police forces in cooperation with the FBI.

A top executive with Mr. Rich's companies said there was no link between Mr. Rich and the companies identified in the documents.

The operation led to the arrests of 50 persons, and 150 more are under investigation in connection with a $500 million money-laundering ring.

The probe, one of the largest in recent history, was born out of the U.S. Justice Department investigation of the Bank of New York's role in large-scale money laundering from Russia in 1999.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/703565/posts

[kcvl]

More Clinton "friends" involved with Marc Rich...


Grigori Loutchansky, a Russian "businessman" who was invited to an October 1993 Democratic fundraiser where he met President Clinton, even though Western intelligence and police agencies consider him a Russian Mob figure active in money laundering, narcotics smuggling and nuclear materials trading.

[kcvl]

Following the corruption of the Clintons and the DNC will give you a MAJOR headache!



UNITED STATES INFORMATION SERVICE
Senate Hearing on Corruption in Russia
Sept. 23 , 1999:

Jesse Helms: . ."the first lady's two brothers were involved in a nut-growing venture with a crooked Georgian warlord, whose goal is to overthrow our friend and ally, President Eduard Shevardnadze. Worse still, the Rodham brothers' partner in this venture was a man named Grigory Loutchansky, and we'll hear about him later today, a known organized-crime figure involved in the smuggling of nuclear materials.


*****


Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - October 30, 1996
Suspected nuclear dealer attended Clinton fund-raiser
By Christopher Ruddy

FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW

- WASHINGTON - Why did President Bill Clinton meet with Grigori Loutchansky, a man whose company the current CIA director has told Congress is "an organization associated with Russian criminal activity"?

That question has a number of national security experts who are concerned about Loutchansky and NORDEX - an international company which has been linked to the smuggling of nuclear materials - wondering.

*****

SECOND INVITATION

In an unpublished, extensive interview with TIME magazine, excerpts of which the Tribune-Review has obtained, Loutchansky explained how he ended up meeting with Clinton: "I was invited by a friend of mine - Sam Domb - he was a trustee (sic) of the Democratic National Committee - to take part in a dinner which was given by Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore and 20 Senators ... in October 1993. It was in Washington in some museum. ... I was invited as an outstanding Jewish businessman.

Loutchansky went on to say he spoke privately with the president for about two minutes, discussing the "problems of nuclear missiles in the Ukraine." Loutchansky also told the Jerusalem Report he "agreed to a request from the president to deliver a private message to the leader of the Ukraine."

snip


According to Federal Election Commission records, in the months immediately following the October, 1993, Washington dinner, Domb donated $90,000 to the DNC. In the past three years he has forked over $155,000 to the committee.

snip


Loutchansky received just last year from the Democratic National Committee for a VIP dinner with Clinton. "Dear Mr. Loutchansky," wrote DNC finance director Richard Sullivan, "I cordially invite you to have dinner with President Clinton on Tuesday, July 11, 1995, at the Hay Adams Hotel in Washington, D.C."

[kcvl]

White House Provided DNC With Top-Secret Information
By Bob Woodward
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON

The White House supplied top-secret intelligence information to the Democratic National Committee to block a Latvian businessman with alleged ties to organized crime from attending a $25,000-a-person fund-raising dinner with President Clinton, according to government officials and other sources.

The effort was successful, and the businessman, Grigori Lout-chansky, who had been formally invited to attend the DNC fund-raising dinner in 1995, was abruptly disinvited.

In the course of the episode, political operatives in the White House and the DNC gained access to and disseminated information gathered by some of the nation's most sensitive intelligence-gathering methods. Many did not have the required high-security clearances to receive such information.

http://www-tech.mit.edu/V117/N17/bdnc.17w.html

[kcvl]

Klinton, Sam Domb in the Middle, Grigori Loutchansky

[kcvl]

Clinton - Marc Rich - Russian Mob - Algore - UN - Iraq Oil for Food - Chinese Military - Iran - Hillary Clinton - DNC

They never met criminals they didn't love...


In his second debate with Al Gore, George W. Bush claimed that some of the $4.8 billion loaned to Russia by the International Monetary Fund in August 1998 to prop up the ruble had ended up in the pockets of former Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.


snip


the commission Gore co-chairs with Prime Minister Chernomyrdin has become a major conduit through which taxpayer subsidies are directed to joint economic ventures. Following a GCC meeting in Moscow last July, Gore and Chernomyrdin announced the creation of a $400 million lending facility in Russia that would be operated by the Chase Manhattan Bank and backed by the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) -- that is, by American taxpayers.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1997/vo13no07/vo13no07_gore.htm

[Ken H]

Jack Quinn, Clinton's former White House counsel, took Rich as a client, things changed. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, the Anti-Defamation League and, of course, mega-fundraiser Denise Rich all submitted letters directly to Clinton, through Quinn, requesting a pardon.

I don't have the link, but the following is legit regarding Gorelick and Quinn.

"Clinton-appointed board members at Fannie Mae include Marc Rich lawyer Jack Quinn and Janet Reno's lieutenant at the Justice Department, Jamie Gorelick."

[Smartass]

Follow the money, and it will lead to Bubba's house.

[texasbluebell]

The corruption is never-ending.

[thoughtomator]

more Clinton Legacy

[backhoe]

Crosslinking- Click on the nifty little picture:

[T'wit]

All in the family.

[qwertz]

Close Friend Of President Clinton Was A Top Mossad Source,
Could Wreck Hillary's Presidential Run

Billionaire fugitive Marc Rich, a close personal friend of President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hilary, was one of the most important high-level contacts Mossad had in the United States.

The revelations published here for the first time, could be a serious blow for Hilary Clinton’s plans to run for the Presidency.

Today Rich, a Belgium-born Jew who has taken Spanish nationality, lives in Switzerland under heavy armed guard protection. There is no extradition treaty with the United States to enable him to be questioned by the FBI about his until now secret connection to Mossad.

In January, 2000, his last day in office, President Clinton pardoned Rich, a secretive commodities trader indicted in 1983 on charges of evading almost $50 million tax and illegally buying oil from Iran during the Tehran hostage crisis in 1979.

The question that will inevitably dog Hilary Clinton, if she runs for the Presidency, will be how much did she and her husband even suspect about Rich’s Israeli intelligence links.

An MI6 file covering the Clinton years in the White House reveals that Rich is also suspected of knowing the real identity of a top Mossad informer in the Clinton Administration.
The informer is still only known as “Mega”. The name was first discovered on February, 1997, by the National Security Agency, NSA. It provided the FBI with an intercept of a late-night telephone conversation from the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

It was between a Mossad intelligence officer, still identified only as “Dov” and his superior in Tel Aviv. He was later named as Mossad director-general, Danny Yatom.

“Dov” had asked for guidance as to whether he “should go to Mega” for a copy of a letter written by Warren Christopher, then Secretary of State, to PLO chairman, Yasser Arafat.

Yatom instructed Dov, according to a transcript of the intercept, “this is not something we use Mega for”. The MI6 file indicates that Mega had been in place towards the end of the first Bush Administration.

It also describes how Rich had acted as a “conduit” for the powerful Jewish lobby in the United States to counter FBI demands that the hunt for Mega should be pursued as vigorously as the FBI dealt with spies from other countries.

The then MI6 head of station at the British Embassy sent a memo to London stating that “dinner guests at the White House dining table – who include Hollywood stars, attorneys, editors and senior members of the Anti-Defamation League – lose no opportunity to remind Clinton of the damage he could face in this matter. They argue the hunt is not properly grounded and that Israel has already explained to DOS (Department of State) the use of Mega”.

Mossad sayanim – the Hebrew name for “helpers” – in the US media had already planted stories that Mega was an incorrect hearing of the Mossad slang for the CIA, Elga.

“Further, Mega is supposedly a well known word in USIC (US intelligence community). It is said to be a joint code for shared intelligence with Mossad”, the MI6 memo stated.

President Clinton’s only comment on pardoning Marc Rich came after he left office. “It was terrible politics. It wasn’t worth the damage to my reputation”, he told Newsweek magazine.

There has been widespread speculation among opponents of the Clintons that Marc Rich “bought” the pardon with political donations and gifts that his former wife, Denise Rich, gave the president and other democrats.

But in a hint of Rich’s important connections to Mossad, Clinton has admitted that he granted the pardon “partly because the Justice Department did not oppose a pardon and because I had received a request from the government of Israel”.

That request came in a personal handwritten note from another old friend of Bill Clinton, Israel’s former prime minister, Ehud Barak.
The MI6 file reveals that the pardon was stitched into the Camp David peace agreement by another plea-bargainer, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Clinton was convinced there were “strong mitigating circumstances for a pardon”. Rich and his first wife, Denise, fled to Switzerland in 1983 – just before US prosecutors brought charges against him of tax evasion and trading with the outlawed regime in Iran.

The couple divorced a decade later and Denise, 59, now lives in a magnificent Fifth Avenue duplex overlooking Central Park. Rich, 69, has remarried and lives in similar splendor in the exclusive town of Zug in Switzerland. He still deals in commodities. His company, Marc Rich & Co Investment, has recently been taken over by the Russian Alfa Group for a reported $3 billion.

Rich’s secret work for Israel included organizing Israeli passports for members of the Russian Mafia. So far thirty known members of various Mafia groups are currently traveling on Israeli passports. The FBI were also investigating Rich’s connections to various money-laundering operations involving mid-European banks and those in Canada and the United States.

Rich’s prime use for Mossad was as someone who moved in the highest financial circles in Europe, the Middle East and South America.
It is those links the FBI and other teams of US investigators were examining to see if they link to the large sums of money Rich paid to the Clintons and other Democrats before the pardon was granted.

At the time, US Federal prosecutor Mary Jo White launched a criminal investigation into Rich’s financial links with Clinton and his wife.
White obtained copies of Clinton’s White House phone logs and those of Air Force One, the Presidential aircraft. The logs covered all calls the President and Mrs Clinton made to Rich. There was also a complete record of all his calls to them.

All official calls are monitored by the US communications team that accompany the President and his wife on all visits. The calls were described at the time as “a key element in our investigation” by one of White’s aides.

Clinton himself received from Rich, just before leaving office, a check for $450,000 to help him set up his Presidential Library Fund. Rich also sent $1.1 million last year to the Democratic Party to help Al Gore fight for the Presidency.

Until now, all the financial links to Rich’s past have not been pursued. But it is the Mossad connection which could prove to be a “smoking gun” for Hilary Clinton, should she enter the Presidential race – either next year or in 2008.

Shortly before he was kidnapped by Hezbollah in October, 2000, Mossad agent Hanan Tannenbaum visited Rich in his Swiss home.
Tannenbaum had been sent by former Mossad director, Danny Yatom, to discuss what Tel Aviv sources later admitted were “intelligence matters of the highest order”. At the time, Yatom was personal security adviser to prime minister Ehud Barak. Hezbollah somehow spirited Tannenbaum out of Europe to their base in the Beka’a Valley. His fate remains unknown.

In January, 2000, shortly before the Rich pardon was granted, the Senate Judiciary Committee received documents that showed Marc Rich played a crucial role in helping the Bank of Credit and Commercial International (BCCI) arrange for Abu Nidal to receive “hundreds of millions of US dollars for illegal arms transactions in an effort to persuade its wealthy Middle East backers that the bank was staunchly pro-Arab”.

A sworn affidavit by Ghassan Quassem, for 17 years a senior officer with BCCI, states: “British weapons secretly destined for Abu Nidal were financed through BCCI offices and shipped under export documents that Marc Rich knew to be phony. My role at the bank was to handle the Nidal account. I later became a spy for the CIA and MI6”.

With the coming election years promising to be a knuckle-duster fight, there is a real possibility that the closest Jewish friend the Clintons had may once more step back into a spotlight he has never welcomed. Nor them.

Rich was one of 140 pardons Clinton granted for what was a rogues gallery. The clutch of shady characters included a heroin dealer.
But it was the odious figure of Marc Rich who has left a permanent stain on Clinton’s presidency – and raised questions now.

March Rich played a key part in supporting the apartheid regime in South Africa, and the economic rape of post-Soviet Russia. His former wife, the Manhattan socialite, pleaded his cause by throwing money at the Clintons – even giving Bill a saxophone.

A hint of Clinton’s feelings for Rich is contained in a book proposal he has entered into with Knoph, the New York publisher, for $10 million.
In an outline for a chapter headed “How A Man Gets What He Really Wants”, Clinton writes: “Sometimes people who seem to have very little in common can discover what they have in common”. Was he referring to Rich?

Certainly the billionaire is not quite as rich as he was two years ago. In March, 2001, British Customs officers at Gatwick airport seized $1.9 million of Rich’s money. The money was seized under UK laws designed to “prevent the movement of money from suspected drug trafficking”.

Last week in Zug, Rich refused to answer questions about his intelligence links – or his connections to Saddam Hussein and the remaining members of the “axis of evil”, North Korea and Iran. Having renounced his American citizenship, he now travels on Spanish and Israeli passports. He has dual nationality with both countries. Until recently, he also held a Bolivian passport.

The power for a President to grant a pardon stems from the Constitution. This states that the President “may grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States. A President can issue a pardon for “any Federal crime for any reason and no reason – before or after conviction”.

The Clinton pardon stopped the prosecution in their tracks. Post-pardon Rich is free to return to the United States without fear of prosecution – except possibly in the case of compromised national security.

There is no precedent for that – and Rich is unlikely to provide one.
But his links to Mossad remain a ticking time bomb for Hillary Clinton.

Gordon Thomas
09.29.03 06:21 AM

http://www.bushcountry.org/news/sep_news_pages/g_092903_thomas_president_clinton_mossad_hillary.htm


Once a Mossad agent, always a Mossad agent. So what did our friends in Israel have to do with the oil-for-food scandal?

[JimRed]

If they could not get him before they probably won't get him now. He and his partner Pincus Green have Switzerland bought off and they will never extradite those guys at this point.

We need international bounty hunters for cases like this. Grease enough palms locally to get them to look the other way, and drag the sucker back!

[mcshot]

Rich would wind up a suicide victim if he was of no worth to BJ Clinton. I think Rich is Bills retirement plan.

mc

[hoosiermama]

Looks like the FBI, CIA and Ashcroft have their work cut out for them.....Hope they finish the job sooner rather than later.

[BJClinton]

So when is BJ Clinton going to hit the UN circuit to set things strait?

I have no intention of doing anything of the sort.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Don Corleone]

Brother "Soros" is an international commodity speculator. Wanna bet that his name surfaces in here somewhere too?