Marc Rich
Marc Rich was perhaps one of the most scandalous pardons in recent history. Marc Rich was known for being a successful businessman through mostly unscrupulous means. He made billions dealing oil with countries that were embargoed by the U.S. He was known to trade with Iran, Libya, Cuba, and apartheid South Africa and with rebels that were known for violence. He also made sure that he never paid taxes on his ill-gotten gains by concealing his assets from the IRS.
It was in 1983 that the hammer came down on the billionaire. He faced charges of tax evasion, wire fraud, trading with the enemy, and racketeering. The charges were more than enough to put him in prison for the rest of his life. So he did what any other wealthy man would do, he fled the country. He found himself a mansion in Switzerland and there he remained at large from the FBI for nearly 20 years. Even though he was able to avoid arrest and extradition to the U.S., he still wanted to make the charges against him go away. To that end, he started paying off any politician he could find.
He gave money not only to American politicians but also to a number of Israeli causes. He hoped that officials in Israel would petition the United States on his behalf. It was not until 2000 when Rich’s money reached Eric Holder that he started to see a return on his investments. Eric Holder was the deputy attorney general and he was in charge of advising the president on the merits of various petitions for pardons. Eric Holder hoped that cooperating with Rich (whose lawyer had ties to presidential candidate Al Gore) would pay off later on, perhaps with a promotion to attorney general.
The problem was that Eric Holder knew that the justice department would never sign off on a pardon for an active fugitive who had been using his money to evade justice. So Holder brought the pardon directly to President Clinton himself and advised the President to sign it. On the last day of his presidency, President Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich. It was a move that had many believing the president had been paid off (Marc Rich had donated $450,000 to the presidential library) and both Democrats and Republicans saw it as an abuse of power. Bill Clinton later admitted it was a bad pardon and was not worth the permanent damage to his reputation.