The Secret Life of a Billionaire

Yet his ability to elude capture for so many years has led some to speculate on a conspiracy to keep him out of jail. Copetas tells of an instance in which U.S. authorities were preparing to capture Rich in Finland, only to discover Rich's jet had turned around during the trip at 20,000 feet and returned to Switzerland. And that was one of many near misses, he says.

But Copetas dismisses speculation there may have been a government conspiracy against catching Rich. "Why was Marc Rich able to avoid capture? Because he knew who to pay off and he had the money to do it. Everyone has a price," says Copetas.

To capture felons abroad, he notes, the U.S. State Department has to first alert the foreign country before a U.S. agent can enter the country and do the job. "It's not a conspiracy. It's good old-fashioned money, power, and greed," Copetas says. "Mark Rich wanted to make a lot of money. With a lot of other wealthy and powerful people who wanted to make money."

Weinberg says he got all the support he needed from the U.S. government. "We just ran into a brick wall with the Swiss government back in 1984 when they wouldn't extradite him," he says.

"The American government was behind us. We filed the extradition requests. You know, the State Department was behind us. We made all the contacts, and they just wouldn't send him back," he says.

Pricey Book

Even Copetas' book about Rich, Metal Men: How Marc Rich Defrauded the Country, Evaded the Law, and Became the World's Most Sought-After Corporate Criminal, published in 1985, has become a curiosity.

Put out by a major publisher, Putnam, in the United States, Britain and Japan, it strangely has become a rare, hot item, with people asking as much as $400 a copy on the Internet.

Copetas, who now writes for the Wall Street Journal and other publications from Paris, has his theory. He thinks Rich bought them up after they ran their course in the major stores.

"I was told by numerous Rich people that [Rich told his] people to go out and buy up as many copies as they could to keep them off the stands. That their feeling was, in any event no one was going to be interested in his story at this time, which was true," says Copetas.

He tells a story of seeing a man carting away a trolley full of the books out of the old Doubleday Bookshop on Fifth Avenue, New York. Copetas followed the man into Rich's pre-flight headquarters building, and up to his penthouse office suite.

"Now, I don't know what happened to that books after they got in there. But I doubt that Marky-boy was signing copies for his friends."

The new edition is scheduled to be published early April.