Viktor Bout
Viktor Anatolyevich Bout is a Russian arms dealer and politician. A weapons manufacturer and former Soviet military translator, he used his companies to smuggle arms from Eastern Europe to Africa and the Middle East during the 1990s and early 2000s. Bout gained the nicknames the "Merchant of Death" and "Sanctions Buster" after British minister Peter Hain read a report to the United Nations in 2003 on Bout's wide-reaching operations, extensive clientele, and willingness to bypass embargoes.
In a 2008 US sting operation Bout was arrested in Thailand on terrorism charges by the Royal Thai Police in cooperation with American authorities and Interpol. The United States Ambassador to Thailand Eric G. John requested his extradition, which was mandated by the Supreme Court of Thailand in 2010. Bout was accused of intending to sell arms to a United States Drug Enforcement Administration informer pretending to represent the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia for use against American forces in Colombia, but Bout denied the charges and predicted an acquittal.
In 2011 Bout was convicted by a jury at a federal court in Manhattan, of conspiracy to kill American citizens and officials, delivery of anti-aircraft missiles, and providing aid to a terrorist organization; he was sentenced to the minimum 25 years' imprisonment. From 2012 until 2022, Bout was held at the United States Penitentiary, Marion. In 2022, he was released in a prisoner exchange for American basketball player Brittney Griner, who had been sentenced, in August 2022, to 9 years of imprisonment for bringing 0.7g of cannabis oil into Russia. Bout had served 10 years in prison before his release in December 2022.
After returning to Russia, Bout joined the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia in 2022 and won a seat in the Legislative Assembly of Ulyanovsk Oblast as a member of the LDPR on 2 July 2023.
Early life
Bout's origins are unclear. United Nations documents and Bout himself both state his birthplace as Dushanbe, Tajik SSR, Soviet Union, and that his date of birth is most likely 13 January 1967, although several other dates are possible. He has an older brother named Sergei Bout.Bout became a Russian citizen following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. According to the UN Security Council Committee on Liberia, Bout holds at least four passports. A number of sources referred to Bout as a Tajik national or Tajik-born.
Military career
Bout served in the Soviet Armed Forces. There is no definite information on his military career except that he graduated from the Soviet Military Institute of Foreign Languages in the late 1980s. Bout's training allowed him to become a polyglot and master five foreign languages: Portuguese, English, French, Arabic, and Farsi. He is reported to be fluent in Esperanto, which he learned at age 12 in the early 1980s as a member of the Dushanbe Esperanto club. Bout's personal website stated that he served in the Soviet Army as a translator, holding the rank of lieutenant.It is unknown what rank Bout held while in military. In a radio interview with Radio Echo Moskvy, Bout himself said he retired with "an officer's rank." Other reports identified Bout as a former major. Bout is thought to have been discharged from the Soviet Army upon its dissolution in 1991 with the rank of lieutenant colonel, whereupon he started an air freight business. Other sources state he was a major in the GRU, an officer in the Soviet Air Forces, that he graduated from a Soviet military intelligence training program, or an operative of the KGB.
Bout was involved with a Soviet military operation in Angola in the late 1980s assisting the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola in the Angolan Civil War. He has stated that he was in Angola only for a few weeks. During this time in Africa he went on to learn the Xhosa and Zulu languages. His time in Africa also included a two-year stint in Mozambique.
Post-Soviet era
1990s
It is believed that Bout as a former member of the Soviet military was perfectly positioned to purchase surplus Soviet-era military equipment, including three Antonov An-12 aircraft, in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union. According to Bout's personal website, he founded an air freight business, Air Cess, in Liberia in 1995. Air Cess is the only company connected to Bout that has ever officially recognized him as the head. He operated four Antonov An-8 planes in Angola as it was the only country to allow the An-8 to be used in civilian freight at the time. Reportedly, Bout's companies legally provided air freight services to the French government, the United Nations, and the United States, including transporting flowers, frozen chicken, UN peacekeepers, French soldiers, and African heads of state. Around this time, Bout earned the nickname of "Sanctions Buster" due to his implication in facilitating the violation of United Nations arms embargoes in the western African countries of Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Bout acknowledges traveling to Afghanistan on numerous occasions during the 1990s, but has denied dealing with al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Beginning in 1994, Bout made shipments for the pre-Taliban government of Afghanistan, which later became the Northern Alliance, and knew one of its commanders, Ahmad Shah Massoud. The Central Intelligence Agency described Bout-owned planes as transporters of small arms and ammunition into Afghanistan. In 1995, Bout was involved in negotiations to free Russian hostages during the 1995 Airstan incident.
In 2000, a United Nations report stated, "Bulgarian arms manufacturing companies had exported large quantities of different types of weapons between 1996 and 1998 on the basis of end-user certificates from Togo", 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". This was the first time Bout was formally mentioned in connection with arms trafficking. The weapons may have been destined for use in the Angolan Civil War by UNITA, the opposing faction of the MPLA which Bout had aided during his military service.
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. The cargo supposedly had end-user certificates from Zaire, but the true end-user was UNITA in neighboring Angola. From 1993, UNITA was covered under Resolution 864, a United Nations Security Council embargo prohibiting the importation of arms to Angola.
In Liberia, Bout was suspected of supplying Charles Taylor with arms for use in the First Liberian Civil War, with eyewitnesses claiming that the two met personally.
In 1993, Bout began collaborating with Richard Chichakli. In 1995 the Sharjah International Airport in the United Arab Emirates hired Chichakli to be the commercial manager of its new free-trade zone. Bout began using the UAE's free trade zone, and Chichakli was, at one time, called Bout's "financial manager" by the United States.
Supposedly, Bout had been involved with arms dealings during the Yugoslav Wars, especially with the Bosnian government forces during its uprising against the Milošević government in Yugoslavia. Hasan Čengić, who was the former Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is allegedly one of his former contacts. They came into contact with each other as they both stayed in Tehran during the 1980s and 1990s. The Slobodna Bosna newspaper claims that Čengić was a business partner of Bout since then, when 200,000 AK-47 rifles went missing in transit from Bosnia to Iraq in May 2006. One of Bout's airlines was the carrier.
2000s
After the 2001 United States invasion of Afghanistan, Bout appeared in Moscow and stated that his aircraft made regular flights to Afghanistan, but continued to deny any contact with al-Qaeda or the Taliban—instead supplying the rebel Northern Alliance. Soon after the beginning of the War in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda is said to have moved gold and cash out of Afghanistan. In July 2003, The New York Times interviewed Bout, who stated that "I woke up after Sept. 11 and found I was second only to Osama."In 2004, Bout and Chichakli allegedly set up Samar Airlines in Tajikistan to conduct money laundering activities and protect assets from authorities, according to an indictment by the U.S. Justice Department in 2010. Bout is suspected of supplying weapons to numerous armed groups in Africa in the 2000s, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the Second Congo War. He may have employed some 300 people and operated 40 to 60 aircraft.
Bout's network allegedly delivered surface-to-air missiles to Kenya to be used to attack an Israeli airliner during takeoff in 2002.
Bout was reportedly seen meeting with Hezbollah officials in Lebanon during the run-up to the 2006 Lebanon War, while some sources claim he was actually in Russia when the meeting took place.
Records found in Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's former intelligence headquarters in Tripoli, shortly after the overthrow of the Gaddafi government in 2011, indicated that in late September 2003, British intelligence officials told then-Libyan intelligence chief Musa Kusa that Bout had a "considerable commercial presence in Libya" and aimed to expand his interests there.
In 2007, the Los Angeles Times reported that the U.S. government and its contractors paid Bout-controlled firms roughly $60 million to fly supplies into Iraq in support of American forces, describing Bout as a "linchpin" for American supply lines in Iraq.
Investigation
Bout's strategy of constantly moving locations, owning numerous companies, and frequently re-registering aircraft made it hard for authorities to make a case against him. He has never been charged for the alleged African arms deals to which he owes his notoriety. During Bout's reported operations, he is believed to have lived in various countries, including Belgium, Lebanon, Rwanda, Russia, South Africa, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates. In 2000, Bout was charged in the Central African Republic with forging documents and was convicted in absentia, but the charges were later dropped.Belgian authorities requested that Interpol issue a notice for Bout on charges of money laundering. In 2002 an Interpol red notice on Bout was issued. Bout's website states that because he failed to appear in court a Belgian warrant for his arrest was issued but later cancelled. The site has a document in Dutch to support the claim that the Belgian case against him was dismissed due to his lack of a fixed residence, and because the case could not be prosecuted in a timely fashion.
Bout's U.S. assets were among those frozen in July 2004 under Executive Order 13348, which describes him as a "businessman, dealer and transporter of weapons and minerals" and cites his close association with Charles Taylor.