WASHINGTON Replying to a storm of controversy over his last-minute pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich, former U.S. president Bill Clinton on Sunday denied claims the billionaire had bought his way out of trouble.

"The suggestion that I granted the pardons because Mr. Rich's former wife, Denise, made political contributions and contributed to the Clinton Library Foundation is utterly false," he wrote in the New York Times. "There was absolutely no quid pro quo."

In an indignant conclusion, he wrote: "I am accustomed to the rough and tumble of politics, but the accusations made against me in this case have been particularly painful because for eight years I worked hard to make good decisions for the American people.

"I want every American to know that, while you may disagree with this decision, I made it on the merits as I saw them, and I take full responsibility for it."

Commodities trader Rich, who lives in Switzerland, was one of America's most wanted fugitives for 17 years, accused of evading 48 million dollars in taxes, racketeering, wire fraud and violation of an oil trade embargo.

A Senate committee and a federal prosecutor are now investigating whether Rich funnelled money to Clinton through his ex-wife before the president pardoned him and his business partner Pincus Green on his last day in office, January 20.

Denise Rich has donated more than 1.5 million dollars to Clinton's campaigns, the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign. She also gave 450,000 dollars for Clinton's presidential library, to be built in his home state of Arkansas.

In his article, Clinton wrote that "The exercise of executive clemency is inherently controversial" - citing former president Nixon's commutation of the sentence of trade union leader James Hoffa and President Ford's pardon of Nixon over the Watergate scandal.

Clinton wrote that he ordinarily would have rejected pardons for Rich and Green "because these men did not return to the United States to face the charges against them".

However, he had decided otherwise for a number of "legal and foreign policy reasons".

For one, Clinton wrote, there were dissenting legal opinions about whether the men had actually broken U.S. tax laws. Their companies had since paid some 200 million dollars in fines and taxes.

Dropping the criminal charges would also pave the way for civil suits "if they do personally owe money".

At any rate, Clinton added, the U.S. government should have launched a civil suit rather than place criminal charges in the first place.

Clinton added that he was also influenced by high-ranking Israeli officials and Jewish community leaders in the United States and Europe who had urged the pardon because of Rich's "contributions and services to Israeli charitable causes".

This included contributions "to the (Israeli intelligence service) Mossad's efforts to rescue and evacuate Jews from hostile countries, and to the peace process through sponsorship of education and health programs in Gaza and the West Bank".

(DPA)