I encourage the Commonwealth Development Corporation to educate itself on
investment trends in Africa in order to better leverage her fund of funds. If
they cannot find the relevant information, I'll be happy to share it with
them. Whatever they do, the CDC must not look to filling the vacuum left by these
odious characters. Train on propriety and you will find that Africa offers a
wealth of opportunity for investment. Or take your investment to the poor
areas of Britain.
One down, 99 to go. Enjoy.
Acting for US, Thais detain alleged Russian arms smuggler known as `Merchant
of Death'
AP
Posted: 2008-03-06 17:05:18
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - A Russian dubbed the "Merchant of Death" for
allegedly supplying weapons to Africa's bloody conflicts over power and diamonds
was arrested Thursday in Thailand on suspicion of conspiring to smuggle guns to
Colombia's leftist rebels.
Viktor Bout, 41, whose dealings reportedly inspired a 2005 movie about the
illicit arms trade, was arrested at U.S. request in his hotel room in Bangkok,
said police Lt. Gen. Pongpat Chayapan. Bout had eluded arrest for years and
was finally seized after a four-month sting organized by the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration.
In New York, federal authorities unsealed a criminal complaint charging that
Bout conspired to sell millions of dollars worth of weapons, including 100
surface-to-air missiles and armor-piercing rockets, that he thought were going
to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
The leftist group, which has been fighting Colombia's government for more
than four decades, is listed by the U.S. as a terror group. Bout and an
associate, Andrew Smulian, were charged with "conspiring to provide material support
to a foreign terrorist organization."
Thai police Col. Petcharat Sengchai said Smulian was still being sought.
Bout, who has never before been prosecuted for arms selling despite
investigations in several countries, has always denied being involved in illicit
deals. The paunchy businessman was shown briefly by Thai police to reporters; he
stared blankly and made no comment.
The criminal complaint in New York said confidential sources directed by the
DEA posed as FARC members while negotiating from November to February to buy
arms from Bout.
Noting that lengthy investigation, a law enforcement official in Washington
said there was no link between Bout's arrest and the weekend seizure by
Colombian troops of a top FARC leader's laptop computer. The official spoke on
condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information.
In New York, U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia would not say how much the weapons
involved in the alleged deal were worth but said the cost of transporting
them alone was set at $5 million. He said the weapons were to be parachuted to
FARC fighters in Colombian territory.
The arrest "marks the end of the reign of one of the world's most wanted
arms traffickers," Garcia said.
Bout, a former Soviet air force officer, allegedly built his contacts in the
post-Soviet arms industry into a business dealing arms to combatants in
conflicts around the world. He is generally believed to have been a model for the
arms dealer portrayed by Nicolas Cage in the 2005 movie "Lord of War."
Bout's best-documented activities have been in Central and West Africa,
where he has been accused of funneling weapons into various civil wars since the
early 1990s.
In 2000, Peter Hain, then Britain's Cabinet minister for African affairs,
called Bout "the chief sanctions-buster" flouting U.N. arms embargoes on the
warring parties in Angola and Sierra Leone, dubbing the Russian "a merchant of
death."
Bout also reportedly supplied arms to warring parties in Afghanistan before
the 2001 fall of the Taliban's Islamic regime.
One of his companies also served as a subcontractor involved in transporting
U.S. military personnel and private U.S. contractors in Iraq, according to a
book about Bout by journalists Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun published
last year.
The book, "Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War
Possible," also says a plane in Bout's fleet made several airdrops of
weapons to FARC guerrillas between December 1998 and April 1999. It says the
flights dropped about 10,000 weapons to the rebels, "enabling them to greatly
enhance their military capabilities."
In 2005, the U.S. Treasury Department said: "Bout has the capacity to
transport tanks, helicopters and weapons by the tons to virtually any point in the
world. The arms he has sold or brokered has helped fuel conflicts and support
U.N. sanctioned regimes in Afghanistan, Angola, the Democratic Republic of
Congo, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Sudan."
U.N. reports say Bout set up a network of more than 50 aircraft around the
world, owned by shadowy companies with names such as Bukavu Aviation
Transport, Business Air Services and Great Lakes Business.
Bout's list of alleged customers in Africa includes former dictator Charles
Taylor of Liberia, the Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, the late dictator
Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, now known as Congo, and both sides of the civil war in
Angola.
A U.N. travel ban imposed on Bout said he supported the effort of Taylor's
regime in Liberia to destabilize neighboring Sierra Leone and gain illicit
access to diamonds. West Africa's diamonds have become known as "blood diamonds"
for the warring they have inspired.
In October 2006, President Bush issued an executive order freezing the
assets of Bout and several associates and warlords in Congo and barring Americans
from doing business with them. They were accused of violating international
laws involving targeting of children or violating a ban on sales of military
equipment to Congo.
The U.S. Treasury's 2005 sanctions announcement said air transport companies
controlled by Bout "played a key role in supplying arms to Charles Taylor's
regime in Liberia and the Sierra Leone rebel group, the Revolutionary United
Front," both of which were notorious for inflicting atrocities on civilians.
In 2002, Belgium issued an international arrest warrant for Bout through
Interpol, the international police agency, on charges of money-laundering and
criminal conspiracy.
Bout is believed to have served in an air transport unit of the Russian
military until about 1991. He built his business on the huge drawdown of weapons
and aircraft in the former Soviet bloc of eastern Europe as the Cold War
waned.
A 2005 report by Amnesty International, a London-based human rights group,
alleged Bout was "the most prominent foreign businessman" involved in
trafficking arms to U.N.-embargoed countries. It implicated Bout in transferring
"very large quantities of arms" from Ukraine that were delivered to Uganda via
Tanzania aboard a Greek-registered cargo ship.
Bout's businesses included many legitimate operations as well, according to
a report by the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity's International
Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
"Bout's companies shipped vegetables and crayfish from South Africa to
Europe, transported United Nations peacekeepers from Pakistan to East Timor, and
reportedly assisted the logistics of Operation Restore Hope, the U.S.-led
military famine relief effort in Somalia in 1993," said the center's 2002 report.
Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Moscow-based Center for Strategies and
Technologies, described Bout as a rich "adventurist, one of these guys who emerged
at the start of the 1990s and started pumping weapons from the former Soviet
Union into Africa."
Associated Press writers Larry Neumeister in New York, Lara Jakes Jordan in
Washington, Ambika Ahuja and Grant Peck in Bangkok, and Douglas Birch and
Peter Leonard in Moscow contributed to this report.
On the Net:
Treasury Department site on Bout:
http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/reports/0426-bout-designation-ch art.pdf
Center for Public Integrity report on Bout:
http://www.publicintegrity.org/bow/report.aspx?aid=157
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP
news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed
without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active
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03/06/08 17:03 EST
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