The Clintons and tax cheat Marc Rich
/The New York Times has been beating its partisan drum regarding Donald Trump's taxes. But, as Sussex County citizen activist Harvey Roseff points out, there is an even larger tax story out there that "better deals with proper ethical behavior."
Roseff writes:
"Today's NY Times story is that Trump filed his taxes and it was proper. That's all that matters - nothing was avoided or illegal. In fact, Trump filed to laws and regulations that Bill Clinton was in charge of. Irrespective of if we are for or against Trump or Hillary, the story that taxes were 'avoided' is wrong - the government got what it wanted.
So let's look at Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich. A tax cheat who was on the FBI's most wanted list. Rich undermined US sanctions and hugely profited. Rich was pardoned and many leading Democratic leaders (and of course Republican) denounced Clinton's act. So compared to the Trump tax story, here we have one person thwarting the will of the people's government.
And ever since, Rich's interests have taken care of the Clintons."
Roseff links to a story from the New York Post (January 17, 2016):
Bill Clinton’s pardon of fugitive Marc Rich continues to pay big
January 17, 2016 | 6:00am
Fifteen years ago this month, on Jan. 20, 2001, his last day in office, Bill Clinton issued a pardon for international fugitive Marc Rich. It would become perhaps the most condemned official act of Clinton’s political career. A New York Times editorial called it “a shocking abuse of presidential power.” The usually Clinton-friendly New Republic noted it “is often mentioned as Exhibit A of Clintonian sliminess.”
Congressman Barney Frank added, “It was a real betrayal by Bill Clinton of all who had been strongly supportive of him to do something this unjustified. It was contemptuous.”
Marc Rich was wanted for a list of charges going back decades. He had traded illegally with America’s enemies including Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran, where he bought about $200 million worth of oil while revolutionaries allied with Khomeini held 53 American hostages in 1979.
Rich made a large part of his wealth, approximately $2 billion between 1979 and 1994, selling oil to the apartheid regime in South Africa when it faced a UN embargo. He did deals with Khadafy’s Libya, Milosevic’s Yugoslavia, Kim Il Sung’s North Korea, Communist dictatorships in Cuba and the Soviet Union itself. Little surprise that he was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.
Facing prosecution by Rudy Giuliani in 1983, Rich fled to Switzerland and lived in exile...
Read the rest of the story here:
http://nypost.com/2016/01/17/after-pardoning-criminal-marc-rich-clintons-made-millions-off-friends/
