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Some nice links there. This one caught my eye:

Investigating Marc Rich and his deals with Nigeria's Oil

Fourth, he has been a key player for well over 25 years in Nigeria's export of its crude oil. He is not your garden-variety businessman. In fact, at certain points in Nigeria's recent economic history, Marc Rich has been the kingpin.

For example, ...surprise, surprise(?) in August of 1999, three months after taking office, former retired General and two-time Nigerian President Obasanjo (picture, right) and his government announced 16 crude oil contracts to replace the 41 approved under previous military governments. Remarkably, the controversial international businessman Marc Rich "survived" the overhaul of the established international crude oil trading houses who dominated Nigeria's exports. They were called the "magnificent seven."

The seemingly ubiquitous Mr. Rich reemerged as a contractor. Unknown to some less savvy officials in Nigeria, he is the operator of Glencore International AG. The man, in that fateful month had netted a new deal, the third best, a direct contract for 90,000 bpd (barrels per day). Also, G[l]encore was licensed to operate Ghana National Petroleum Corporation's 30,000 bpd and Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) partner Napoil's 20,000 bpd for a total 150,000 bpd. Such is the power and reach of Marc Rich, inside Nigeria, even in these days of "democracy accountability, probity and integrity...."

In an insightful report titled "Corruption Flourished In Abacha's Regime", James Rupert of the Washington Post Foreign Service wrote on Tuesday, June 9, 1998: Much of the oil that Nigeria pumps each day goes to the major international oil companies -- Shell, Mobil, Chevron and others -- that operate the oil fields. But the largest single share goes to Nigeria's state oil company, which, under the direction of Abacha's camp, sells its oil to independent traders. According to official announcements of oil sales and reporting by the London-based oil newsletter Energy Compass, Nigeria's main trading partners in the Abacha era have been the London-based firms Arcadia and Addax, and the Swiss-based company Glencore, which was under the control of Marc Rich, an American commodities dealer. (He later renounced his American citizenship; he holds Spanish, Israeli and, I believe, Belgian citizenships currently). Rupert added that Abacha's predecessor, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, "doled out the contracts" to a wide circle of supporters, allowing them to take commissions from oil traders, said Patrick Smith, editor of the London-based newsletter Africa Confidential."

Rupert's report underscored the fact that when the 1991 Persian Gulf War drove oil prices upward, Nigeria earned a windfall that never made it to government coffers. Soon after taking power as he wooed political support, Abacha named a commission headed by Nigerian economist Pius Okigbo to investigate. Okigbo reported that $12.2 billion in oil earnings had disappeared between 1990 and 1994, but no one was ever prosecuted. The former trader, a European, said he participated in three oil purchases in recent years -- technically from Nigeria's state oil company but negotiated with Abacha aides at the presidential villa. Each contract specified a "commission" to be paid to a specific beneficiary, he said. He declined to name the beneficiaries on the contracts he helped negotiate. He said other traders had noted that sometimes the beneficiary is a well-known Nigerian, and at other times "it's a completely unknown person" who traders believe is a front for someone else. He said the contracts he dealt with ordered the commissions paid to bank accounts in Singapore, Bermuda and Switzerland."

Also, the Sunday Nigerian Tribune ran a mid-March report which linked Marc Rich and some soldiers (including former head of state retired Gen. Muhammadu Buhari) to the December 31, 1983 coup which removed Alhaji Shehu Shagari as an elected president of Nigeria. The report noted that Rich's oil deals had been on even before Shagari's election, implying but without specifying the obvious that he was equally active during the first tenure of then Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo (with the latter) as a military dictator in Nigeria (February 1976-October 1979).

USAfricaonline.com can report that a number of Nigeria's retired soldiers and a number of civilian executives in the oil industry were willing allies of Rich as he milked the sweet Bonny Light crude and laughed to the banks while children and women in Nigeria's riverine areas and in the Sahelian, drought-stricken parts, and indeed, most of the country, went to bed hungry and with no books to study in school. He utilized his deft and far-reaching "logistical leverage" in Switzerland to "assist" his Nigeria cohorts in making huge deposits in private, secure accounts. Bribery and massive inducement through hard currency transfers were staples of the Marc Rich financial machine inside Nigeria, and beyond.

He operated a number of corporations, and the most significant being Marc Rich & Co. The same company was involved in the Kaduna Refinery Supplemental Steam Production Project.

Michael Dobbs' brief bio of him, includes the following: Mr. Rich was born Marc Reich on Dec. 18, 1934, in the Belgian city of Antwerp, the only child of a prosperous Jewish family. When the Nazis took over Belgium in 1942, the family fled to the United States, settling first in Kansas City, Missouri, and then in New York, where Mr. Rich's father, David, went into the burlap bag business. The Korean War created huge demand for burlap bags used for sandbags, pushing prices sky-high and turning David Rich into a millionaire. For Marc, it was an early lesson in the economics of scarcity. Dropping out of New York University at age 19, he set his sights on becoming a commodities trader." The rest is about the history of controversial deals with Libya's Muammar Ghaddafi, Iranian mullahs, Soviet Communists and a whole lot more.

Another look at Rich by the U.K-based OneWorld organization chronicles Rich's schemes which weakened Nigeria's oil and embargo of all business with then apartheid South Africa. He is identified as one of the "notorious sanctions busters." Among other deeds, OneWorld recalled: For example, in the mid-1980's they copied lists of tankers which called at loading points and determined whether any of the vessels had called at South African ports in the previous year. Tankers so implicated in sanctions busting were not loaded with crude in Nigeria. The oil workers rejected out of hand the apartheid propaganda that an oil embargo against the racist regime would hurt ordinary South African citizens. They also cast unwanted light on corrupt petroleum sales by Nigerian middlemen, where 'private' sales of state-owned crude put Nigerian oil in the hands of notorious sanctions busters such as Marc Rich."

In researching Mr. Rich's deals in Africa, I had access to the valuable report made by Economists Allied for Arms Reduction (EAAR), complied during the Cameron Commission of Inquiry of 1994/95, titled "The Betrayal of the Struggle Against Apartheid." Again, Rich factors into the deals of the ruinous bank, the BCCI.

Before anyone underestimates the credibility and insight of the EAAR, let me cite the leadership of the group: the chairman is globally-acclaimed economist James K. Galbraith while the vice-Chairs are Jurgen Brauer, Michael Intriligator and Ann Markusen. Some of the trustees include Robert S. McNamara, formerly of the World Bank and the U.S. State Department, Clinton's Labor Secretary Prof. Robert Reich and Harvard's international economics scholar Prof. Jeffrey Sachs.

Although dated September 28, 2000, the EAAR report looks back and quoted from the executive summary of the United States Senate investigation into notorious BCCI Bank (it had branches in Nigeria, too), as follows:

"BCCI's unique criminal structure -- an elaborate corporate spider-web with BCCI's founder, Agha Hasan Abedi and his assistant, Swaleh Naqvi, in the middle -- was an essential component of its spectacular growth and a guarantee of its eventual collapse. The structure was conceived by Abedi and managed by Naqvi for the specific purpose of evading regulation or control by governments. It functioned to frustrate the full understanding of BCCI's operations by anyone. BCCI's criminality included fraud by BCCI and BCCI customers involving billions of dollars; money laundering in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas; BCCI bribery of officials in most of those locations; support of terrorism, arms trafficking, and the sale of nuclear technologies; management of prostitution; the commission and facilitation of income tax evasion, smuggling and illegal immigration, illicit purchases of banks and real estate. Unanswered questions include BCCI's financing of commodities and other business dealings of international criminal financier Marc Rich."

Recall that one of Obasanjo's efforts which gained him some regional stature during his first rulership of Nigeria was his actions (initiated by his predecessor the late Gen. Murtala Muhammad) against aparthied South Africa and British Petroleum (which later became AP). Such commendable efforts included the Muhammad-Obasanjo support for southern Africa nationalists. Remarkably, Rich was working against their efforts.

I've also read the informative Platt's Oilgram (Volume 79 Number 15, January 23, 2001) where it is reported: In 1973, with oil trading profits soaring after the first Arab embargo, Rich left Phibro to form his own firm, Marc Rich & Co, which soon became a major player in world oil markets. He was particularly adept at securing supplies of Nigerian and Iraqi crudes, and gained a reputation as a reliable supplier in tough times to crude-short oil majors."