Viktor Anatolyevich Bout (Russian: Виктор Анатольевич Бут) (born 13 January 1967 nearDushanbe, Tajik SSR, Soviet Union) established a number of air cargo companies and is famous for being a suspected arms dealer. A former Soviet military translator,[1] Bout made a significant amount of money through his many air transport companies,[2] shipping cargo mostly in Africa and the Middle East during the 1990s and early 2000s.[citation needed] Just as willing to ship cargo for Charles Taylor in Liberiaas he was for the United Nations in Sudan and the United States in Iraq,[2][3] Bout may have facilitated huge arms shipments into various civil wars in Africa with his private air cargo fleets during the 1990s.[4] While claiming to have done little more than provide logistics, he has been called a "sanctions buster"[2] by former British Foreign Office minister Peter Hain who described Bout as "the principal conduit for planes and supply routes that take arms... from east Europe, principallyBulgaria, Moldova and Ukraine to Liberia and Angola."[5] Peter Hain has also called Bout a "merchant of death,"[6] and an eponymous book by Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun details investigations of Bout by the US and others.[7] Douglas Farah, when interviewed by the magazine Mother Jones, said, "It is important to note, as we do in the book, that much of what Viktor Bout does is, while reprehensible, not illegal."[8] A UN document, and Bout himself, state his birthplace as Dushanbe, USSR (now the capital of Tajikistan)[9][10][11][12] possibly on 13 January 1967.[9][12] But a few other birthplaces have been suggested;[13][10] a 2001 South African intelligence file listed him as Ukrainian in origin.[14][15] There is confusion regarding Bout's military career, although it is clear he served in the Soviet Union's armed forces. He graduated from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages[12][16] and is said to be fluent in six languages[17] including Russian, Portuguese, English, French and Arabic.[11] His personal website states that he served in the army of the Soviet Union as a translator, holding the rank of Lieutenant.[1] Other sources state he rose to the rank of major in the GRU, an arm of the Soviet armed services that combined intelligence agents and special forces,[2] that he was an officer in the Soviet air force[3] or that he was KGB.[9] According to an United Nations report in 2002, Bout's wife's father Zuiguin "at one point held a high position in the KGB, perhaps even as high as a deputy chairman".[13]. The language institute Bout attended was ran by GRU.[18][13] Bout served in Angola, part of the Soviet contingent of a 1987[16] peacekeeping operation there.[12][16] Bout has said he was in Angola for only a few weeks.[9] According to a report by Stratfor, he worked with GRU-affliated Igor Sechin in Mozambique in the 1980s. The reported noted that Sechin was "the USSR's point man for weapons smuggling to much of Latin America and the Middle East." Sechin became a close ally of Vladimir Putin and is the first deputy premier under Putin as of 2008.[19] Bout's website says that he began an airfreight business in Africa around the time of the collapse of the USSR.[11] He received his planes from the General Staff's Main Intelligence Directorate and may have been a member of the directorate himself.[13] Bout has lived in a number of countries, including Russia,[18] South Africa,[20] Syria[21] and the UAE.[21] Bout has bought a mansion in Belgium and a luxury apartment in Moscow.[22] He has a luxury villa in Johannesburg, South Africa. It has 5-meter high walls topped by electric fences, armed guards with machine guns, patrolling dogs, two swimming pools, a luxurious guesthouse, cascading ponds and a corolla of tropical plants surrounding the main house.[23] The nickname 'Sanctions Buster' is due to Bout having been implicated in facilitating the violation of UN arms embargoes in Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo.[24] A 2000 United Nations report states that "...Bulgarian arms manufacturing companies had exported large quantities of different types of weapons between 1996 and 1998 on the basis of (forged)[12] end-user certificates from Togo."[25][26] And that "...with only one exception, the company Air Cess, owned by Victor Bout, was the main transporter of these weapons from Burgas airport in Bulgaria."[25][26] These weapons may have been destined for use by Uniao Nacional para a Independencia Total de Angola (UNITA),[25][26] one faction in Angola's 1975–2002civil war. Another suspected arms dealer, Imad Kebir, is said to have employed Bout's aircraft during the mid-1990s to transport weapons to Africa from Eastern European states.[27] The cargo supposedly had Zairean end user certificates, but the true end-user was UNITA.[27] From 1993, UNITA was under a United Nations Security Council embargo prohibiting the importation of arms, established in Resolution 864.[28] Soon after the beginning of the 2001–present war in Afghanistan, al Qaeda is said to have moved gold and cash out of the country; "credible reports" state that some of the planes used to do this were linked to Bout.[27] Bout says he has been to Afghanistan many times.[10] And while openly stating that starting in 1994[29] that he had made shipments for the pre-Taliban government, later becoming the Northern Alliance, as well as having known Ahmed Shah Massoud, an Afghan Northern Alliance commander,[9] Bout denies any dealings with al Qaeda or the Taliban.[29] Author Douglas Farah, in a 2007 interview, stated Bout had customers in both the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, however.[30] Bout reportedly worked with Yuri Zaprudnov, who has a GRU background. Zaprudnov has worked in diamond trade. In 2002 Zaprudnov was arrested by Belgium for money laundering and forging passports; he paid 7,500 euro bail and escaped the country. Belgian police states the diamond trade operations are linked to Victor Bout.[31][32] Bout was spotted at a Hezbollah facility in Lebanon in July 2006. Israel later found out that Hizbollah had Russian-made RPG-29 Vampir and9K129 Kornet anti-tank weaponry.[33][34] Bout has reportedly worked with Imad Kabir (also known as Imad Bakri).[35] Bout is also suspected of supplying weapons to about 20 armed groups in the deadly Second Congo War.[13] His front companies for this effort may have employed an estimated 300 people and operated 40-60 aircraft.[13] Bout's villa in the Kimihurura section of Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, was dubbed "The Kremlin" by locals.[13] As well as some more controversial customers such as Charles G. Taylor, the French government,[9] the UN[8][15][30] and the US[8][15][30][21]have also used his planes. His planes have reportedly shipped flowers, frozen chicken,[2] UN peacekeepers, French soldiers and African heads of state.[9] Constantly moving location, owning numerous companies and frequently re-registering aircraft[2][25] made it hard for authorities to make a case against Bout. He has never been charged for the alleged African arms deals to which he owes his notoriety.[36] The Belgians requested that Interpol issue a notice for Bout on charges of money laundering, and in 2002 an INTERPOL Red Notice on Bout was issued requiring his provisional arrest with view to extradition.[8] Bout's website states a Belgian warrant (not the INTERPOL notice) for his arrest for failing to appear in court was issued but later cancelled.[1] The site has a document in Dutch to support the claim that the Belgian case against him was dismissed.[37] The day of his Bangkok arrest, an INTERPOL red notice requiring his provisional arrest with view to extradition was requested by the US against Bout. The alleged crime was conspiracy to provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization.[38] His wanted poster can be viewed here. Due to Bout's close association with Charles Taylor's Liberia, the United States froze Bout's, along with many others', US assets in July 2004 through Executive Order 13348, which specifically mentions him as a "businessman, dealer and transporter of weapons and minerals" in the annex.[39] Charged in 2000 with forging documents in the Central African Republic, Bout was convicted in absentia and the charges were later dropped.[16] Bout was arrested in Thailand on an INTERPOL red notice and faced extradition to the US, where a formal indictment against him had been made. Royal Thai Police arrested Bout in Bangkok on March 6, 2008,[38] the culmination of a sting operation set up by US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents.[3] Bout allegedly offered to supply weapons to what he thought were representatives of ColombianRevolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels.[2][3] The day after his Bangkok arrest, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Bout with conspiracy to provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization,[40] conspiring to kill Americans, conspiring to kill US officers or employees and conspiring to acquire and use an anti-aircraft missile.[41] After months of delay, Bangkok's Criminal Court began an extradition hearing for Bout on September 22, 2008.[41] In February 2009, members of the United States Congress signed a letter to Attorney General Holder and Secretary of State (i.e. Foreign Secretary) Clinton that expressed their wish that the Bout extradition "remain a top priority".[42] Bout had been in prison in Bangkok for over a year when on August 11, 2009, the court ruled in his favor, denying the US request for extradition based on a lack of legal basis and political motivation behind the case.[43] Bout remains in a Thai prison, however, and the US filed new charges against him on in February, 2010.[44] The new charges which were filed against Viktor Bout do not purport that Viktor Bout sold arms of any kind. Rather, the charges are as follows. The first count is conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The second count is money laundering conspiracy. The third count is wire fraud conspiracy. Counts four through nine are wire fraud charges. Each of these charges relates to a single event, with a company not owned or operated by Viktor Bout purchasing passenger aircraft from American companies based in the United States.[45] Despite the August 2009 decision in favor of Viktor Bout, the Thai court has been waiting to decide the appeal case since then. However, the public prosecutor has already prepared the new request for extradition to accompany the additional nine charges filed against Viktor Bout. This new request has not yet been made public.[46] The 2005 film, Lord of War is thought to be based, in part, on stories of his alleged gun-running.[2][47] In 2007 Stephen Braun and Douglas Farah published a book about Bout entitled Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible.[7]Viktor Bout
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Виктор Анатольевич Бут
Viktor Anatolyevich Bout
Born 13 January 1967
Dushanbe, Tajik SSR, Soviet UnionOther names Victor Bout, Viktor Butt, Viktor Budd, Victor But, Victor Anatolievitsh, Boris, Vadim Markovich Aminov, Viktor Bulakin Known for Arms trafficking Contents
[hide][edit]Personal history
[edit]Soviet military service
[edit]Africa
[edit]Places of residence
[edit]Suspect shipments
[edit]Eastern European arms to Angola
[edit]Afghanistan
[edit]Diamond trade
[edit]Hezbollah
[edit]Second Congo War
[edit]Rwanda
[edit]Other customers
[edit]Arrest warrants
[edit]Interpol
[edit]Executive Order 13348
[edit]CAR trial
[edit]Thai arrest and extradition trial
[edit]In the media
[edit]See also
[edit]References
[edit]External links
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
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