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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Patricia Trinchero who wrote (101458)	3/6/2007 3:50:59 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361250

Rich.... The strange case started with the Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act of 1973, which established a system of price controls on crude oil produced in or imported to the United States. In 1980 and '81, the Energy Department classified oil that came from wells that produce 10 barrels a day or less as "stripper" oil and exempted it from the price caps. According to his 1983 indictment, Rich saw this regulation as a potential gold mine, setting up a scam to have his company's oil relabeled "stripper" oil by a reseller, and thus seemingly exempted from the price controls. To hide this activity and the illegal profits it produced, says Sandy Weinberg, the lead prosecutor in the case, Rich allegedly had a reseller claim Rich's profits were really its own and then hand over the money through sham transactions to companies Rich controlled in Panama. This led the government to charge Rich and his partner Pincus Green with fraud and the evasion of $42 million in taxes. On top of that, Weinberg alleges, Rich bought crude oil from the Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran while Iran was holding U.S. citizens hostage. This was in direct violation of a U.S. trade embargo -- and, in effect, helped to arm the Iranians by giving them needed cash.