http://www.nypostonline.com/news/nationalnews/26317.htm
TREASURY BOSS HAD RICH LINK AT ALCOA
Tuesday,March 13,2001
By BRIAN BLOMQUIST
WASHINGTON - Alcoa bought an aluminum refinery from fugitive billionaire Marc
Rich while the company was headed by Paul O'Neill, now treasury secretary. In
a separate deal, Alcoa, on O'Neill's watch, sold Rich, a key figure in the
Pardongate scandal, raw material for aluminum production through a middleman,
trade reports show. O'Neill, 65, was tapped in January to be treasury
secretary after 13 years as chairman of Alcoa. While at the world's largest
aluminum maker, O'Neill amassed holdings valued at more than $90 million,
which he plans to keep rather than sell through a blind trust. Rich, a
billionaire commodities trader who was heavily involved in buying and selling
aluminum, had been on the lam for 17 years in Switzerland when Bill Clinton
pardoned him on his last day as president. Republicans and many Democrats
reacted with outrage, but President Bush has taken a low-key approach and
urged the country to move on. O'Neill has been mostly mum. In the context of
its global aluminum interests, Alcoa's deals with Rich were fairly small and,
in one case, done through an intermediary. In 1995, Alcoa bought a refinery
in St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands from Rich, according to an American
Metal Market report. It wasn't known how much Alcoa paid for the refinery,
which reportedly was capable of producing 600,000 tons per year of alumina,
the white powder that is the raw material used to make aluminum. O'Neill's
spokeswoman, Michele Davis, said Rich wasn't a factor in Alcoa's decision to
buy the refinery. Davis said Alcoa bought the St. Croix refinery for "the
same reason he [O'Neill] bought [plants] in Hungary and Italy. Alcoa bought a
lot of aluminum refineries around the world in the last 10 years, regardless
of who owned them. It was more about where it was, and capacity." In the
other deal, Alcoa essentially sold Rich alumina produced at a refinery in
Jamaica. Alcoa and the Jamaican government each owned equal shares in the
refinery, which produced 750,000 tons of alumina per year. Rich bought about
375,000 tons directly from the Jamaicans and an additional 125,000 from
Alcoa, through the Jamaicans, according to a 1990 report in the Mining
Journal. Rich used the alumina to make aluminum ingots at smelters his
companies operated in the United States and Australia. In the late 1980s and
early 1990s, he had smelters in West Virginia and South Carolina. In 1994, he
claimed to have severed ties from the aluminum company he controlled,
Glencore International, which also owned the companies that operated the U.S.
smelters. Some aluminum-industry observers say they've never been convinced
Rich actually relinquished control of Glencore. The White House had no
comment on O'Neill and Rich.
