Business
When a few big companies control a resource from the well to the pump, a trader who buys and sells single cargoes at the going price creates real competition. Opening that kind of open, deal-by-deal market was among the most profitable ideas of its century.
A person's real accomplishments can vanish from public memory once a scandal attaches to the name. Fleeing charges and a controversial pardon, not building a market, are what this name now stands for.
A trader who ignores the politics and morals of the other side can deal with governments everyone else shuns: violent, corrupt, or racist ones. Being willing to trade with anyone is both the edge and the scandal.
The same person can trade with shady regimes and also be passionate about helping people in need. Cheering or condemning him alone misses that both sides are true, and readers are left to weigh them.
A trader who sees wars and revolutions as openings, not disasters, can profit where others pull back. Turmoil cuts off normal supply routes, and someone willing to take high risks can fill the gap.
Because countries will go to war to secure oil, whoever controls its flow gains power far beyond ordinary business. The resource has built great family fortunes and made one trader the 'undisputed King of Oil.'
Commodity trading is a famously secretive business, and its most successful players can stay almost invisible. For years the press had only artists' sketches of a man who moved huge amounts of oil.
Someone who runs from charges instead of defending himself in court avoids a legal verdict but is convicted in public opinion. The question of why he never came back to fight hangs over everything else he did.
A trader can quietly help the very governments that indict him, even while they try to capture him. Public prosecution and private usefulness to the state can run side by side.
Commodity traders work in a space between seeing reality clearly and fooling themselves about what their deals mean. Capitalist societies tolerate this by choosing not to look closely at where their oil comes from.