Pardoned financier Marc Rich dies in Switzerland

Marc Rich, one of the world's wealthiest businessmen, died Wednesday of a stroke at a hospital in Lucerne, near his home of decades. He was 78, and his Israel-based spokesman Avner Azulay said he would be buried Thursday in a kibbutz in Israel.

Rich was a wheeler-dealer indicted for fraud, racketeering and tax evasion on a grand scale, who got a pardon from Bill Clinton, hours before the US president left office. A working-class Jewish boy who left Belgium to escape the Nazis, Rich rose to become the billionaire known as the "King of Commodities." (AP)