The Merchant of Death from the 11-part series Making a Killing The Business of War
The Merchant of Death from the 11-part series Making a Killing The Business of War The Merchant of Death from the 11-part series Making a Killing The Business of War The Center for Public Integrity website From the outside, the $3 million property in the plush, residential Sandhurst area of Johannesburg could easily have been mistaken for a detention facility. The property was surrounded by 5-meter high walls topped by electrified fences. Armed guards with machine guns and dogs patrolled the grounds, and the daily security expenses ran higher than what most South Africans made in a year. But the compound was no prison. Within the walls were all the amenities of the leisure class: two swimming pools, a luxurious guesthouse, cascading ponds and a corolla of tropical plants surrounding the main house. On a warm afternoon in March 1998, an elderly Russian woman was cutting up fruit in the kitchen, while her daughter and son-in-law played tennis across the street. Suddenly, the idyll was destroyed by the sound of grenades blasting open the door, as armed intruders stormed in. The Russian woman grabbed a large watermelon and smashed it on the head of one of the gunmen before she was knocked unconscious by a rifle butt. Hustling across the street, her son-in-law arrived in time to confront the armed thugs, who roughed him up. The masked men fled with $6 million dollars in cash, but left paintings and expensive artifacts untouched. A message had been sent to Victor Bout. A short while later, a motorcycle gunman opened fire on a car carrying Bout and two associates, and another of his employees was beaten up and robbed on a Johannesburg street. Whatever the circumstances, for Bout the intent was now unmistakable. "The message was you're vulnerable so get out," said Richard Chichakli, one of his business associates. A few months later, Bout put his home up for sale. Bout, a short, stocky 35-year-old native of Tajikistan, graduated from Moscow's Military Institute of Foreign Languages and reportedly is fluent in six. He started out in business in Afghanistan when his air force regiment was disbanded during the breakup of the former Soviet Union. According to intelligence documents, the polyglot with personal skills was able to establish working relationships with various African heads of state and rebel leaders the late Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, Liberian President Charles Taylor, former Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko, Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi, Jean-Pierre Bemba, the leader of the Congo Liberation Front, and the former leaders of Congo-Brazzaville, among others. Bout had access to what they wanted. The end of the Cold War resulted in a massive amount of surplus weapons and spare parts being dumped at often very low prices onto the private market. Bout had the capacity to deliver not only small arms, but also major weapons systems, and deliver them almost anywhere in the world. And his associates ranging from former U.S. military personnel and Russian officials to African heads of state and organized crime figures gave him a lengthy list of buyers and sellers with whom to do business. He ran a maze of individuals and companies, which employed some 300 people and owned and operated 40 to 60 aircraft, including the largest private fleet of Antonov cargo planes in the world, according to an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Through his web of companies, Bout made it almost impossible to trace his activities. He leased aircraft to other individuals and companies so that he was not directly tied to illegal activities. Indeed, Bout adamantly denies that he was involved in weapons trafficking, or that he was anything other than a legitimate air cargo entrepreneur. 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. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he explored investment opportunities in agriculture and telecommunications and expressed interest in promoting conservation of the country's national parks. "That was the staple stuff," a former associate, who refused to be named, said in an interview. "The dodgy flights were all extras." U.N. monitors have accused Bout of shipping contraband weapons to rebel movements in Angola and Sierra Leone and to the Taylor regime in Liberia. Bout and his associates operate, or have operated, in Afghanistan, Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Congo-Brazzaville, Pakistan, the Philippines, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, United Arab Emirates and Uganda, according to reports by the United Nations, the U.S. State Department and non-governmental organizations. Intelligence documents obtained by ICIJ and interviews conducted with many of those following and working in the global arms trade further support the allegations against Bout. Dubbed "the merchant of death" by a British government official, Bout is a former Cold Warrior who became the most notorious gunrunner of the post-Cold War period. He was among the major arms suppliers to combatants in Africa and Afghanistan, often in violation of international embargoes. His planes carried weapons to war zones, and left loaded with diamonds and other valuable resources, such as the mineral coltan, used in the electronics industry. Bout's international shipping business operated through a maze of companies registered around the world, and he was an expert at maneuvering through the labyrinth of brokers, transportation companies, financiers and transshipment points. Shuttling among Africa, Russia, Europe, the Persian Gulf and Central Asia, Bout left few, if any, trails. One associate said he had never seen Bout put his signature on a document. There's some question of what he would sign if he did: in law enforcement circles, Bout is known simply as 'Victor B' due to his many aliases. Until allegations surfaced in January 2002 that he had armed the Taliban in Afghanistan, Bout's global empire operated with impunity in Western democracies, former East Bloc nations, and the developing world. He relied on his network of business partners to provide weapons that fueled some of the most brutal conflicts of the last decade. No national government had been able to do more than temporarily inconvenience him, and the international community through the United Nations had done nothing more than attempt to embarrass him. "Bout would fly for anyone that paid" During the Cold War, Africa had been one of the arenas where client regimes and insurgencies battling them had served as proxies for the United States and the Soviet Union. When the Cold War ended, the involvement in the continent's affairs of both the Soviet Union's successor states and the United States waned. But the conflicts continued and presented a lucrative market to arms dealers. Bout saw these opportunities and seized them. His charisma, language skills and, not least, his ability to deliver the goods and fly to places no one else would, gave him access to political leaders and rebel commanders. "Bout would fly for anyone that paid. He was apolitical," the former associate told ICIJ. "He is good because he takes the chances." In May 1997, as rebel troops of Laurent Kabila were approaching Kinshasa, the capital of what was then Zaire, Mobutu and his immediate family fled to his ancestral village Gbadolite. Realizing he was no safer there than in the capital, Mobutu decided to leave Zaire on May 17. But because his luxurious private jet was in Kinshasa, picking up more family members, Mobutu relied on an old Soviet-built cargo plane to escape the rebel forces, according to sources interviewed by ICIJ. Bout supplied the aircraft. Rebel forces got close enough to fire on the plane as it took off. "We were lucky it was a Russian plane. If it had been a Boeing, it would have exploded," Mobutu's son Nzanga is quoted as saying in Michela Wrong's book, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz, which chronicles Mobutu's misrule of the country. Chichakli, the Syrian-born American who worked for several companies owned by Bout, said Mobutu was just one of many clients. "We do not support specific dictators, presidents and so on. We're a transport company," he said in an interview. "If you buy a ticket from A to B, we will carry." Between July 1997 and October 1998, point A was Burgas, a Bulgarian city near the Black Sea, and point B was purportedly Togo in Western Africa. Thirty-seven flights left Burgas carrying weapons - including 20,000 82mm mortar bombs, 6,300 anti-tank rockets, 790 AK47 M1 assault rifles, 1,000 rocket launchers, 500 anti-tank launchers, 100 anti-aircraft missiles, 20 missile launchers, and almost 15 million rounds of ammunition - that ended up in the hands of Savimbi's UNITA forces in Angola, according to a 2000 U.N. report. The shipments were worth $14 million. Chichakli denied that Bout was involved in shipping weapons to UNITA, but said they did transport food and mining equipment to Savimbi in November 1995. "Arms are not a good commodity to trade," Chichakli said in an interview. "You'll lose your client." Angola the ultimate destination for the weapons had long been a market that Bout, a former Soviet air force officer, coveted. According to former associates, Bout worked in Angola after his regiment was disbanded. Angola had been caught in the middle during the Cold War; the United States backed Savimbi and his UNITA rebels and the Soviet Union supported the government of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos. Angola has one of the largest fleets of Russian-manufactured aircraft in Africa, a fact that was not lost on Bout, who wanted to establish a maintenance facility for Russian planes in South Africa, according to two former associates. Bout's time in Angola gave him a chance to establish contacts and explore fuure business prospects. He found one in UNITA. From 1996 to 1998, UNITA was rearming itself. A UNITA general told the United Nations that Bout was their main supplier. Gen. Jacinto Bandua said that the flights arranged by Bout "were known to combine arms with general cargo in order to disguise their missions." According to the United Nations, Bout provided forged end-user certificates to KAS Engineering, a Gibraltar-registered company, which contracted the Togo arms shipments from the Bulgarian suppliers. End-user certificates are the documents that validate the sales required whenever arms are shipped to ensure the transaction is legal but since there is no international standard they are easily forged. A U.N. report states that "some of the end-user certificates had been provided to the representative of KAS Engineering (Gibraltar) through the captain of a flight coming from Togo and some by express mail from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Further investigations disclosed that the mail was sent by a Mr. Victor Bout. The forged end-user certificates were all based on a genuine document issued in July 1997 by Col. Assani Tidjani, at the time Togo's Army chief of staff, which he had given to a representative of UNITA, Marcelo Moises Dachala, or "Karrica." Togo was a supporter of UNITA, and Dachala was one of the rebels' main arms procurers. The U.N. report concluded that UNITA was dependent on this "lifeline" provided by brokers, shipping agents and aviation companies who shift their "operations in pace with the dynamics of the battlefield and the ever-changing locations of the UNITA forces." "The murder and mayhem of UNITA in Angola, the RUF in Sierra Leone and groups in Congo would not have been as terrible without Bout's operations," Peter Hain, the British Foreign Office Minister for Europe, told ICIJ. Hain has been at the forefront of the international effort to expose criminal networks behind Africa's trade in small arms and the "conflict diamonds" that fund such purchases. Hain also said that the danger posed by Bout was clear in his supply of weapons to another deadly regime: the Taliban. Supplying the Taliban According to a Belgian intelligence document first reported by ICIJ in January 2002, Bout earned $50 million selling weapons to the Taliban in the late 1990s. Another European intelligence source independently verified the sales, and an intelligence document from an African country in which Bout operated claim that Bout ran guns for the Taliban "on behalf of the Pakistan government." Bout, in a statement, denied any association with the Taliban or al Qaeda and with "arms traffickers and/or trafficking or the sale of arms of kind [sic] anywhere in the world." A Pakistani official denied that Pakistan served as a conduit for weapons shipped to the Taliban, saying that Pakistan abided by the Dec. 19, 2000, U.N. arms embargo imposed on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and actively promoted interdiction. The weapons allegedly supplied by Bout were delivered before the sanctions were in place. Bout's relationship with the Taliban began in August 1995, when the radical Islamist movement was trying to overthrow President Burhanuddin Rabbani's government in Kabul. One of Bout's planes flying from Albania via Sharjah and transporting small arms and military equipment on behalf of Israeli company Long Range Avionics to Rabbani was intercepted by a MiG-21. The plane was forced to land in Taliban-controlled territory, according to the ICIJ investigation. Bout, together with Russian diplomats, met Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders to negotiate the release of the detained crew in Kandahar, but they were not successful. A year later, on Aug. 16, 1996, the seven Russian crewmembers disarmed their guards and took off in the Il-76 for Sharjah, according to press reports. The Washington Monthly later quoted an unnamed source, who said he believed Bout turned the situation to his advantage by establishing contacts with the Taliban. After being a blip on the radar screen of the international community since the mid-1990s and operating with impunity for years in Africa's conflict zones, Bout's profile rose markedly after he was linked to supplying the Taliban, which gave military support to al Qaeda. The United Arab Emirates, the main base for his operation, told the United Nations in early 2002 that his companies were prohibited from operating there and banned him from entering. In February 2002, Belgian authorities issued an international arrest warrant through Interpol for him on "money laundering practices and criminal conspiracy." The case is still pending. Chichakli, who lives in Texas and was named by the United Nations as being Bout's chief financial manager, said U.S. authorities had not contacted him about Bout, even though Bout listed the Texas corporate address for San Air General Trading, a United Arab Emirates-based company owned by former Bout employee Serguei Denissenko, as his destination when he applied for a visa to come to the United States in summer 2000. Chichakli "clearly has connections to Bout," Lee S. Wolosky, a former National Security Council official told ICIJ. Wolosky, who closely followed the international arms trade, said the connection "concerned me and others at the National Security Council," but that there was a limit to what the White House could do, aside from referring the case to law enforcement. "U.S. authorities know everything about Bout," Chichakli said. On Feb. 28, 2002, Bout surfaced in Moscow to defend himself. Just a few blocks from the Kremlin, he walked into the studios of radio station Ekho Moskvy to protest his innocence in a live interview. "What should I be afraid of?" Bout said. "I haven't done anything in my life to worry aboutI deal exclusively with air transportation. And I have never been involved in arms trade. I have never taken part in it." The same day, the Russian news agency Interfax quoted Igor Tsyryulnikov, a spokesman for Interpol's Russia bureau, saying that no arrest warrant had been received. "We can say for sure that Bout is not in Russia," Tsyryulnikov said. Paper trails leading nowhere Flights carrying arms to Afghanistan were the primary operations from Bout's European base at Belgium's Ostend airport, frequently cited by human rights groups for hosting companies and individuals involved in arms trafficking. Bout established his first Western European company there in November 1994. In March 1995, Bout and a Frenchman, Michel-Victor Thomas, founded Trans Aviation Network Group (TAN), according to U.N. and intelligence reports. Ronald De Smet, a Belgian pilot who used to fly for the Saudi royal family, was TAN's chief executive officer. Chichakli told ICIJ that De Smet, the son of a former official of Gecamines mining company in Congo, "spearheaded" the expansion of Bout's air cargo business in western Europe. Between 1995 and 1997, TAN's operating base was Ostend airport. De Smet and Thomas could not be reached for comment. At first, most of the shipments from Ostend were intended for Afghanistan, according to reports compiled by local citizens' groups that monitor the airport. The Belgian intelligence document obtained by ICIJ noted that Bout's company Trans Aviation (TAN) delivered at least 40 tons of weapons from Ostend to Afghanistan. Soon Bout was also reportedly associated with arms traffickers who armed Hutu extremists carrying out the Rwanda genocide. In 1996, two years after the genocide in Rwanda, Bout and a group of European arms traffickers in Ostend were arming Hutu forces in Congo, according to Johan Peleman, a U.N. investigator into arms violations. But Ostend did not remain an ideal base for Bout's operations. After details of the shipments to Afghanistan were reported in the local media, Bout packed up his possessions, moved out of his home, and left Belgium in June 1997. TAN had already vacated its Ostend headquarters. And Belgian authorities started an investigation into allegations of illegal arms shipments out of Ostend and money laundering. But Bout wasn't ready to give up on Belgium entirely. A company called Air Cess, registered in Liberia, moved into the offices vacated by TAN. Air Cess listed Bout as its director. Later in the 1990s, Bout allegedly transferred the daily operations of Air Cess to his brother Serguei. Such arrangements are typical of how Bout did business. He established a veritable web of companies, some of which he ran, some of which were run by former employees and associates of his, obscuring his involvement in the arms trade. Air Cess, for example, though registered in Liberia, operated in Ostend, Geneva, and Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. The planes that were the backbone of his operations either flew under "flags of convenience" that is, registered in countries that allowed him to circumvent international regulations on air cargo or from airports like Burgas and Ostend that are known for their lax oversight of air freight operations, or from Sharjah. The United Arab Emirates is a major financial center and crossroads for east-west trade. With its large volume of transiting cargo, its bank secrecy laws, and its bustling free trade zones, it is a perfect base for arms dealers. According to the United Nations, almost all of Bout's aircraft operated out of the United Arab Emirates regardless of where they were registered. Bout used Sharjah as an "airport of convenience." Bout excelled at getting around international rules and regulations governing the cargo industry, thanks in part to his connections. The industry lacks effective oversight and the regulations are viewed as being out of date by industry associations. Shipping agents and brokers are unregulated, which makes it difficult to tell who is a legitimate operator and who is not. Airfreight doc… truncated (18,570 more characters in archive)