Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
By MARY JACOBY
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 4, 2001
Perhaps no one is more outraged about President Bill Clinton's 11th-hour pardon of fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich than Tampa lawyer Morris Weinberg.
As an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in the early 1980s, Weinberg attempted to prosecute Rich on charges that he laundered as much as $100-million in profits from illegal oil trades into overseas accounts, all the while avoiding taxes on his allegedly ill-gotten gains.
Rather than make his case in court, Rich first tried to squirrel subpoenaed documents out of the country, then renounced his citizenship and fled to Switzerland, where he has been a fugitive from the U.S. justice system for 17 years.
But hours before he left office Jan. 20, Clinton pardoned Rich, who had hired former White House lawyer Jack Quinn to plead his case. Rich's ex-wife, major Democratic Party donor Denise Rich of New York, also interceded on his behalf. Denise Rich also gave the Clintons furniture valued at more than $7,000 for their new homes in Washington and Chappaqua, N.Y. (On Friday, after much criticism, the Clintons announced they would reimburse Rich and others for gifts.)
In any event, Weinberg is livid. Head of the Tampa office of the Washington-based Zuckerman, Spaeder law firm, Weinberg in the past two weeks has vented his frustration on NBC, CNN, ABC's Nightline and the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
"It's outrageous," Weinberg said about pardons granted to Rich and his partner, Pincus Green. "The pardon power is the ultimate act of mercy the founding fathers gave the president, and to use that power to pardon two people who thumbed their noses at the justice system and who fled for 17 years is outrageous."
On Thursday, Weinberg will appear as the lead witness in Rep. Dan Burton's investigation into the matter. Burton, the Indiana Republican who is chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, also investigated Whitewater and the Clinton fundraising scandals of 1996.
"Somebody had to speak about how unfair and outrageous this pardon was," Weinberg said in explaining his high profile of the past two weeks. Career Justice Department lawyers, who were bypassed in the pardon review process, were just as angry but "couldn't really say anything because they're still part of the government," Weinberg said.
In Tampa, Weinberg has headed some big cases. He was lead Florida counsel for the health care company formerly known as Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., which paid $745-million last year to settle civil Medicare fraud charges. He also defended the Church of Scientology against charges that it played a role in the 1995 death of member Lisa McPherson.