Washington ? Former President Clinton says he regrets the last-minute pardon he gave to fugitive financier Marc Rich because it has tarnished his reputation.

Asked whether he would do it again, “probably not, just for the politics,” he said in an interview with Newsweek magazine. “It was terrible politics. It wasn’t worth the damage to my reputation. But that doesn’t mean the attacks were true.”

Rich was indicted in 1983 on federal charges accusing him of evading more than $48 million in income taxes and illegally buying oil from Iran during the 1979 hostage crisis. He left the United States before the indictment and lives in Switzerland.

Rich is the ex-husband of Denise Rich, a contributor to the Democratic Party and to Clinton’s presidential library.

The House Government Reform Committee, headed by a longtime Clinton foe, Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., said in a report last month that it thinks Rich’s pardon “raised substantial questions of direct corruption, primarily whether pardons were issued in exchange for political and other financial contributions.”

Federal investigators in New York are probing whether any of Clinton’s last-minute pardons were offered in exchange for contributions.