Posted on 12/13/2004 1:14:49 AM PST by kattracks
POST WORLD EXCLUSIVEWASHINGTON 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.
[snip]
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.
[snip]
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.
[snip]
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Amazing resemblance among the four, isn't there?
Doublewide Willie ping
The Clinton legacy is one of massive corruption.
We have yet to uncover all of their criminality.
bump for the truth!
I wonder if any of the Oil-for-Food moolah ended up in Bill's or Hillary's campaign coffers.... Bill never minded if cash came in from the PRC. Why would he scruple to object to funds made possible by Saddam?
Ping to post #112.bump! bump! bump!
It's well to remember that even Barak was involved in lobbying for Rich's pardon, supposedly because of the
large amounts of charitable contributions Rich had sent
Israel's way over the years.Guys like Rich are always spreading the money around, buying friends and loyalty. Columbian drug dealers have done the same thing. I suppose a pardon would have freed up Rich to continue his philanthropic ways, assuming that his well had dried up for Israel. The cast of players in this scandal is not pretty. Our investigation will probably slow down when some American names crop up, and slow down some more, and then, sorry to say, amid threats of blackmail and intimidation, stop completely. I'm not expecting ANY form of real justice. I'm not expecting Annan to be forced to resign.I'm not expecting any concern at all from the member nations of the U.N. that they will be evicted. ALL THAT COULD MAKE THIS HAPPEN WOULD BE MASS PROTESTS OUTSIDE THE U.N. , demanding that they find a new place to live, and a new country to bilk.
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