... 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).[7][28] The charges would have led to a sentence of more than 300 years in prison had Rich been convicted on all counts.[28] The indictment was filed by then-U.S. Federal Prosecutor (and future mayor of New York City) Rudolph Giuliani. At the time, it was the biggest tax evasion case in U.S. history.[29]
Learning of the plans for the indictment, Rich fled[12] to Switzerland and, always insisting that he was not guilty, never returned to the U.S. to answer the charges.[d] Rich's companies eventually pleaded guilty to 35 counts of tax evasion and paid $90 million in fines,[7] although Rich himself remained on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Ten Most-Wanted Fugitives List for many years,[31] narrowly evading capture in Britain, Germany, Finland, and Jamaica.[32] Fearing arrest, he did not even return to the United States to attend his daughter's funeral in 1996.[33]
On January 20, 2001, hours before leaving office, U.S. President Bill Clinton granted Rich a controversial presidential pardon.[30] Leonard Garment, Richard Nixon's acting Special Counsel who had replaced John Dean during Watergate, had both Rich and Rich's business partner Pincus Green as a client since spring 1985 with Scooter Libby representing them as their attorney for the pardon until spring 2000 when Jack Quinn became their attorney.[34][e] Several of Clinton's strongest supporters distanced themselves from the decision.[35] ...
Speculation about another rationale for Rich's pardon involved his alleged involvement with the Israeli intelligence community.[42][43] Rich reluctantly acknowledged in interviews with his biographer, Daniel Ammann, that he had assisted the Mossad, Israel's intelligence service,[2][17] a claim that Ammann said was confirmed by a former Israeli intelligence officer.[15] According to Ammann, Rich had helped finance the Mossad's operations and had supplied Israel with strategic amounts of Iranian oil through a secret oil pipeline.[2] Avner Azulay, a former high-ranking Mossad agent and executive director of two of Rich's philanthropic foundations in Israel since 1993, who played a central role in coordinating the pardon effort, was the one who persuaded Rich's ex-wife (divorced in 1996) Denise to personally ask President Clinton to review Rich's pardon request.[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. Barak subsequently raised the issue with Clinton on several occasions.[34] A former Mossad chief, Shabtai Shavit, had also urged Clinton to pardon. ...
Federal Prosecutor Mary Jo White was appointed by Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate Clinton's last-minute pardon of Rich.[46] She stepped down before the investigation was finished and was replaced by James Comey, who was critical of Clinton's pardons and of then-Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder's pardon recommendation.[47] Rich's lawyer, Jack Quinn, had previously been Clinton's White House Counsel and chief of staff to Clinton's vice president, Al Gore, and had had a close relationship with Holder.[33] ...
Wow, just friggin' wow.
Ya have to read that article, I cannot quote enough of it to summarize the intrigue.
