Viktor Bout's Last Deal
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Over the next several days, CS-1, the supposed FARC representatives, and Smulian continued to hold talks in Bucharest, during which Smulian further clarified the weapons to be included in the shipment. Bout would provide 100 Igla surface-to-air missiles, Smulian said, showing the buyers pictures and weapon specifications on his laptop. If desired, the deal could also include armor-piercing rockets and "special helicopters that can wipe out their helicopters," he said, presumably referring to the Colombian military, as well as the training to use them. The gunships would be equipped with sophisticated missiles and launchers that could fire three rounds at a time, far outmatching any opposition the FARC was likely to encounter. The goods were currently in Bulgaria, Smulian said, and were ready for immediate delivery. The shipping cost alone would be $5 million. (The value of the weapons themselves has not been publicly released.) Smulian provided his FARC customers with a thumb drive containing pictures of the weapons systems he had described, as well as an article about Viktor Bout that included the arms dealer's picture, presumably so they would recognize him at a future meeting.
Meanwhile, Bout was making arrangements to travel to Bucharest. On January 28, he called Smulian to say that it would be another five to ten days before he would have his Romanian visa. Smulian said he understood and emphasized how difficult it would be for the buyers to travel to Moscow. "You know the one guy, the one you spoke to, he comes from the jungle," he told Bout. "You know, that's a problem, and then the documentation they got is not suitable." "I see, I see," Bout replied. The next day, the men spoke again. Smulian assured Bout that everyone was willing to wait for him in Romania, as long as he really intended to come. "One hundred percent sure! One hundred percent sure! Wait for me max 10 days. I am there," he said, adding, "Make sure that [the deal] is real." To speed up the processing of his visa, Bout reached out to an associate (called "CC-2" in the indictment), the head of a Romanian airline who had had dealings with the Russian before. He said he could help Bout with the visa, but then advised him not to come. On Christmas Eve, a Romanian television news program had aired a segment linking the airline operator to Bout's network. He told the arms dealer that Romania was now too dangerous to visit.
When after two weeks Bout had yet to appear in Bucharest, the DEA informants seem to have given up hope of luring him there. On February 7, CS-2, the informant posing as the junior FARC operative, called Bout on Smulian's cell phone to say he and his partner were leaving Romania. "Our organization always needs friends like you that want to help us out," he told Bout, and explained that he was leaving an email address with Smulian (bogotazo32@yahoo.com), which could be used to contact him in the future. Bout assured him he would be in touch in two to three weeks.
Bout's email arrived five days later. It read, "Buenos Dias! This is e mail we can use for communication[.] Best regards[,] Friend of Andrew." The DEA traced the message to a computer in Moscow. Perhaps not wanting to appear overeager, the informants did not immediately respond, instead waiting for the next contact. It came from Smulian, who wanted to confirm that Bout's message had been received. "These days there can be confusion with all the spam coming in," he wrote apologetically. By now, Bout was growing impatient to close the deal and broke protocol by calling CS-2 directly. The informant explained that he and "El Commandante" would be traveling to Thailand in the near future. Bout immediately agreed to meet them in Bangkok.
SITTING HANDCUFFED IN the headquarters of the Royal Thai Police's Crime Suppression Division, Viktor Bout may have been remembering how his supposed FARC clients had not appeared in his collection of mug shots back in Moscow. He sat quietly without expression in the same orange polo shirt and tan slacks he had worn to the ill-fated meeting in the hotel earlier that day. A large man and overweight, his belly slopped over his belt as photographers gathered outside in the hall sneaked pictures whenever the door opened with the coming and going of excited police officers. His fate now lies in the hands of the Thai legal system, where police can hold Bout for up to 84 days without charges while they determine whether he used Thailand as a negotiating site for deals with foreign terrorists. If found guilty, he could face up to 10 years in Thai prison, most likely the one in which he already resides, Klong Prem, long the destination of foreign sex tourists and money launderers. The United States is seeking Bout's extradition to stand trial in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on charges of conspiring to provide weapons to a known terrorist organization. He could serve up to 15 years if convicted. (Smulian, who was reportedly with Bout in Bangok, is currently in U.S. custody, though it's unclear how he got there.) Meanwhile, Stephen Rapp, the UN's chief prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, has expressed interest in prosecuting Bout for fueling the violence in that country with illegal weapons shipments in the 1990s. (Russia, which provided Bout with sanctuary and a secure base of operations for the last several years, decided against seeking his extradition. According to the Washington Times, however, the Russian government has appealed to the State Department for assistance in getting Bout released from Thai custody.)
Whatever happens to Bout, the sophisticated arms-trafficking network he assembled seems unlikely to survive his incarceration. "It's hard to imagine his brother or any of his deputies having the wherewithal to manage the empire as adroitly and fully as he did," says Whitney Schneidman, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs during the Clinton years and one of the first people to recognize the threat Bout posed to the region. Even if he were released after only a few years, it's a virtual certainty that by then others will have risen to take his place. "There are more small-time operators, and I wonder how long it is before one or two of them fill the vacuum," says Galeotti, the Russian crime expert.
For the moment, however, a void has been opened in the black market for military weapons. "There's no one quite like Viktor," Galeotti continues. "There wasn't really room for two Viktor Bouts." To be sure, weapons will still flow illegally across borders, but the service Bout provided, the "one-stop shop," is not known to exist anywhere else. "With Bout you were buying real capacity," explains Winer, the former deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement. "That was the game he was in: 'You hire me, and I'll get you the critical stuff you need to change the correlation of forces.'" It was a unique service and one that Bout used to corner the market. "Most operations, you have one guy do the weapons, another guy to find transport, [and] another person has to figure out where to land it," says Farah. With Bout out of the picture, shipments will be "more costly, less efficient, and more time consuming." But don't expect the business of arms trafficking to suffer too much. As Galeotti notes, "Viktor Bout did not create the market. He was able very effectively to capitalize on it, but he didn't create it, and where there's a market, there will be other suppliers."
Bruce Falconer is a reporter in Mother Jones' Washington, D.C., bureau.
Photo: Interpol
Finally a DEA elite group has arrested GWB
It is about time for the number of conflicts he and his henchmen have financed or provoked to many conflicts to this date.
And arm dealers around the world have prospered by those actions... we must not exclude the armament industry of the USA