aaus-list @ ukrainianstudies.org -- [aaus-list] UKRAINE ARMS EXPORTS

[Taras Kuzio <t.kuzio@utoronto.ca>]

Washington Monthly

January 1, 2002

SECTION: Pg. 19; ISSN: 0043-0633

IAC-ACC-NO: 82262364

LENGTH: 5507 words

HEADLINE: Comrades in arms: meet the former Soviet mobsters who sell
terrorists their guns; arms trade; related article: The Taliban's Favorite
Gunrunner; related article: The CIA's Favorite Gunrunner

BYLINE: Silverstein, Ken

BODY:
THERE IS NOTHING REMARKABLE about Cinisello Balsamo, a working-class town in
Northern Italy just outside Milan. No famous churches or ruins. No great
bars or restaurants. Tourists seldom visit. The rich do not go there to see
or be seen. All of which was fine with Leonid Minin; the shadowy,
Ukranian-born Israeli millionaire wasn't looking for attention. During his
frequent visits to Cinisello Balsamo, Minin liked to stay at the equally
anonymous Hotel Europa, across the street from the town's main cathedral,
where $ 75 can get you a double room and the privacy to do what you want.
Which is what Minin was doing until the wee hours of August 5, 2000, when
police, acting on a tip, barged into Room 341 and found Minin surrounded by
four naked prostitutes, 58 grams of cocaine and half a million dollars worth
of diamonds. A further search turned up a green briefcase stuffed with some
1,500 documents in English, Russian, Dutch, and French. Months later, after
translating and reviewing the documents, Italian law enforcement authorities
discovered that they had stumbled upon an international arms dealer. Minin,
they say, had been running guns from Eastern Europe to the regime of Charles
Taylor in Liberia and to the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a vicious
guerrilla group in neighboring Sierra Leone--both of which are banned from
receiving weapons under a United Nations arms embargo. Now Minin is in jail
awaiting trial on arms-trafficking charges. If convicted--the trial is
expected to get underway as early as this spring--he faces up to 12 years in
prison.

The paper trail seized by the police offers a rare glimpse into the new and
usually opaque world of post-Cold-War international arms brokers. It shows
how a new generation of black market suppliers have helped turn the former
Soviet bloc into a weapons warehouse for outlaw regimes, insurgencies, and
terrorist groups.

In late 1997 and early 1998, planes laden with arms departed from the
Ukraine and flew to Peshawar in Pakistan. From there, the materiel was
trucked to the Taliban government in Kabul. During the 1990s, Iraq and
Yugoslavia bought tens of millions of dollars worth of weapons with the help
of black market suppliers based in Eastern Europe, despite being the objects
of U.N. embargoes at the time. And while it's difficult to trace back
weapons shipments to their original supplier, U.S. government officials
believe that black market arms find their way to weapons bazaars in places
like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen, and from there are bought by terrorist
groups.

The primary destination of most of the illicit small arms is Africa, where
eleven major conflicts (involving 32 countries) have erupted during the past
decade. Among the bloodiest are those in Liberia and Sierra Leone, where
tens of thousands of people have been killed, half a million have become
refugees, and as many as two million have been displaced.

Italian authorities suspect that Minin may have ties to a number of other
Eastern European gunrunners who have been arrested in their country over the
past few years. "It's important to stop this now because otherwise the
problem could explode here," says Walter Mapelli, the prosecutor who is
preparing the case against Minin.

The Italians aren't the only ones worried about the likes of Minin. U.S.
officials and security experts say that the small-arms trade fuels the
growing instability that breeds and harbors terrorism. "The chaos that
exists in parts of Africa has created a black hole where terrorists can come
and go and conceal their activities," says an administration official who
requested anonymity. His views are echoed by Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.),
chairman of the House Africa Subcommittee. At a hearing on Nov. 16, he
charged that international terrorist cells are operating in several African
countries. "U.S. policies toward all regions of the world have been forced
to adjust to the post-September 11 world," he said. "The general weakness of
African governments makes parts of the continent hospitable grounds for
terrorist operations."

One of the hospitable parts of the continent that Royce had in mind is
Liberia, where arms dealers, drug traffickers, Eastern European mobsters,
and mercenaries have all found safe haven under Taylor. So, too, has Osama
bin Laden's al Qaeda network, according to a recent story in The Washington
Post which reported that al Qaeda set up shop in Liberia in 1998 and has
earned millions of dollars by buying cheap diamonds from Taylor's government
and selling them in Europe. Last March, the U.S. government backed a United
Nations resolution that banned travel by senior Liberian officials and
Monrovia's chief financial and military supporters, including Minin. Now,
the Bush administration is supporting efforts to tighten sanctions in an
effort to cut the flow of weapons to Liberia and the RUF, which is supported
by Taylor's regime.

Lee Wolosky, a former National Security Council official, calls black-market
dealers a new and significant security threat. "There can be no world order
with these international criminal syndicates running amok," says Wolosky,
who until last July headed a little-known interagency working group charged
with monitoring and controlling the small arms trade. "They have
significantly increased regional destabilization in Africa and threaten the
transition to law-based democratic states in Central and Eastern Europe."

Missiles in a Pig Pen

The lion's share of the international arms trade consists of above-board
deals between corporate entities and national governments--Lockheed Martin
selling a package of F-16 fighter planes to Chile, to cite one recent
example. In such cases, private brokers have no role. Lockheed negotiates
directly with Chilean government officials and submits the proper paperwork
for review at the Office of Defense Trade Controls, the State Department
agency charged with overseeing the arms business.

However, private brokers are essential in moving weapons to regimes under
international embargoes or to insurgents or terrorists who have no legal
means of purchasing arms. Brokers cover the tracks with complex financial
transactions that make it almost impossible to follow the money, bribes to
ensure that customs inspectors and other officials avert their gaze from
illicit cargo, and bogus documents, especially "end-user certificates" that
show a false destination for the arms. Once shipped, the goods are re-routed
to their true destination.

During the Cold War, a small number of arms dealers with close ties to the
CIA or KGB dominated the private weapons trade. As the Soviet bloc imploded,
a new generation of arms dealers appeared on the scene. Their ranks include
numerous Eastern European mobsters, who are likely to be involved in drug
trafficking, prostitution, and other criminal activities as well as weapons
peddling. Cold War-era arms dealers were certainly not paragons of virtue,
but they sometimes had ideological as well as financial motives. Minin, like
most of the new breed, arranged black-market transfers with only "the pure
motive of pure profit" in mind (as George Bernard Shaw put it in Major
Barbara, his satire of the arms business).

It's impossible to know precisely how much weaponry is moved on the black
market, but estimates range from hundreds of millions of dollars to several
billion dollars' worth per year. Due to the nature of what they sell,
private dealers play an especially significant role in geopolitical affairs.
Approximately 90 percent of all war victims are killed by small arms--three
million people in the last 10 years alone. Herbert Calhoun, a senior foreign
affairs specialist at the State Department's Bureau of Political-Military
Affairs until retiring last November, calls small arms "today's real weapons
of mass destruction."

Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio), the author of legislation passed by the House in
late November that is designed to stop the sale of "conflict diamonds"--gems
that pay for African wars--says that there are practical as well as
humanitarian reasons to police the black-market trade. "If we turn our back
and ignore the problem, we're liable to get sucked in anyway," he says. "The
wars in Africa can be so disruptive and brutal that the U.S. ends up
committing money and sometimes troops to stop them."

Yet law enforcement agencies have a hard time combating Minin and other
black-market dealers because, says Wolosky, they are "stateless" threats.
They typically use one jurisdiction as a hub, a second as a banking center,
a third to buy arms, a fourth as a weapons depot and on and on. "They
operate like drug cartels," says Wolosky. "They disguise their identities
and business operations so well that it's hard to know the scope of their
activities or even who is involved."

Another problem in combating illegal trafficking is that the U.S.
government, like many others, is perfectly happy to use arms dealers to
carry out covert deals when it is deemed to be in the national interest (see
sidebar). The Reagan era marked the halcyon days for such "gray-market"
transfers, with the U.S. employing numerous brokers to secretly funnel
weapons to guerrilla groups in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, and Angola. More
recently, the Clinton administration turned a blind eye to covert arms
transfers that Iran organized to Bosnian Muslim forces during the war in the
Balkans.

At the U.N. small arms conference held last summer, the Bush administration
refused to sign an agreement until a clause was dropped that would have
banned armed sales to guerrilla groups. One immediate reason for American
opposition to the clause, according to a source who is close to intelligence
officials, is that the administration has hopes of establishing a major
covert-weapons pipeline to opponents of Saddam Hussein. (Of course,
following the September 11 attacks, the United States may directly topple
Hussein.)

For brokers, securing weapons has never been easier. Most of the former
Communist states are in dire economic straits and desperate for hard
currency; they see arms sales, covert or overt, as a means of generating it.
The illegal arms trade is further driven by rampant corruption in military
bureaucracies in Eastern Europe, where plenty of insiders have grown rich on
bribes and kickbacks. Much of the dirty money comes from Mafia
organizations, which buy weapons directly from state factories and military
stocks, then warehouse the materiel at makeshift depots around the former
East Bloc. One American arms broker I interviewed told of inspecting
surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) and other merchandise offered by a seller in
Armenia. The goods were stored in empty stalls at a pig farm.

Besides Ukraine, Bulgaria has emerged as the supplier of choice for black
market dealers. Kintex, a state-owned arms exporter established during the
Communist era, has supplied clients ranging from Burundi--where it armed
both government forces and insurgents fighting against them--to Croatia,
which turned to Sofia for help during the Balkans war. In one case, Kintex
was caught shipping weapons to the Croats on an end-user certificate that
showed Bolivia as the purchaser. This raised suspicions, since Bolivia
exclusively uses NATO-standard arms. So did the fact that the certificate's
signer, the illustrious General Juan Carlos Montano, turned out not to
exist.

Russia, a country which the Bush administration has been avidly courting,
has made increased arms exports a central component of its foreign policy.
Rosvoorouzhenie, the state-owned firm that handles about 90 percent of
overseas sales, publishes a weapons catalogue that offers "not only the most
updated high-tech samples of Russian armaments but also a variety of
tailor-made versions compatible with systems manufactured in other
countries." Moscow's weapons have also been liberally supplied to
black-market dealers. According to news accounts, members of the Russian
mafia have supplied arms to Chechen rebels who use them to kill Russian
soldiers.

David Adler, a former CIA case officer who followed the Eastern European
weapons pipeline, points out that after the fall of Communism, the former
Soviet Bloc countries didn't have many viable exports. "Nobody was lining up
to buy their cars," he says. "Weapons became their cash crop."

A retired U.S. intelligence officer who has brokered arms transfers out of
Eastern Europe laughed when I asked how difficult it would be for him to
arrange an illicit deal--say for a few hundred Russian-made SAMs. Obtaining
a range of price quotes from his sources--European-based brokers with good
contacts in the East, officials at various Ministries of Defense, higher-ups
at a few scattered weapons factories--would take no more than 48 hours. For
a bogus end-user certificate, he'd turn to a European arms dealer who
traditionally kept a stack in his safe. "The seller would need some time to
get an export license, then you charter a plane to pick up the goods and
away they go," says this source. "The whole process could be completed in a
month."

The ready availability of small arms, combined with a glut of weapons
available through legal channels, has made prices absurdly low. A July 1999
report by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research said
that in some African countries an AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifle can be had
for as little as $ 6. "In some countries it is easier and cheaper to buy an
AK-47 than to attend a movie or provide a decent meal," the report said. The
American arms broker I interviewed said that a shoulder-fired SA-7
surface-to-air missile, an older Russian model that is largely ineffective
against the most modern military aircraft but deadly if used by a terrorist
against a commercial airliner, goes for about $ 8,000 on the black market.
Newer Russian IGLAs, which are far more accurate and can bring down a
helicopter gunship or a low-flying combat plane, are available for about $
25,000.

Diamonds in the RUF

Investigators who are examining Minin's activities--not only the Italian
authorities but also a panel at the U.N.--have uncovered a long pattern of
murky business dealings. Born in Odessa in 1947, Minin emigrated to Israel
in the 1970s and established a global web of companies, many of them
discreetly incorporated offshore. Minin's primary business vehicle is
Monaco-based Limad AG, which also has offices in Switzerland, China, and
Russia, while his business interests include--in addition to arms--timber,
chemicals, food, clothing, scrap metal, and oil. A U.N. report from 2000 on
arms trafficking into Liberia reports that Minin uses dozens of aliases and
travels with passports from Germany, Israel, Russia, Bolivia, and Greece.
"[He] has a history of involvement in criminal activities ranging from east
European organized crime, trafficking in stolen works of art, illegal
possession of fire arms, arms trafficking, and money laundering," says the
report.

Minin's business contacts and associates are equally unsavory. They have
included Vladimir Missyurin, a Russian mobster who was shot and killed near
Brussels in 1994, Alexander Angert, a Ukrainian mafioso and convicted
murderer affectionately nicknamed The Angel, and Alexander Zukhov, a
Ukrainian emigre who Italian authorities arrested last April and charged
with illegally funneling weapons to Croatia during the Balkans war.

By the late-1990s, Minin had become a major broker of arms to Liberia, where
Charles Taylor took power in 1997 following a seven-year civil war that the
writer Kenneth Cain has described as "a relentless campaign of sadistic,
wanton violence unimaginable to those unfamiliar with the details of man's
capacity to visit the abyss." According to Cain, Taylor "inaugurated the use
of grade school-age children as scouts, spies, and cannon fodder [and]
explicitly employed terror tactics, ethnic cleansing, and political
assassinations." Taylor brought this same style of rule to the presidency,
which he assumed in July 1997. The political opposition and press have been
largely silenced and Human Rights Watch says in its most recent report on
Liberia that members of the police and armed forces act "with complete
impunity" in carrying out harassment, extortion, mistreatment, killings,
"disappearances," and torture.

In foreign policy, Taylor is chiefly known for providing Sierra Leone's RUF
with weaponry, military training, and logistical support. In return for his
backing, the RUF--which routinely amputates the limbs of those who oppose
it--supplies Taylor with looted diamonds from areas it controls. (There are
now hopes that the terrible war in Sierra Leone may be winding down.
Thousands of RUF fighters have trooped into demobilization camps during the
past year, U.N. forces have been deployed across the country and elections
are set for this May.)

While most Liberians live in dire poverty, Taylor has plenty of money for
his personal use and to finance arms purchases for his security forces.
Diamonds from the RUF are a primary source of his funding, which
investigators believe explains the haul of gemstones found in Minin's
possession at the time of his arrest.

Under Taylor's rule, arms traffickers have prospered in Liberia, among them
Gus Kouwenhoven, a Dutch national who runs the Hotel Africa outside
Monrovia, and the notorious Victor Bout, a Russian broker based in the
United Arab Emirates (see sidebar). Minin, though, was the best-connected
gunrunner in the country, as well as the most visible. Vi, then in Liberia,
he lived in a compound near Kouwenhoven's hotel and was invariably escorted
by a three-man security detail. He was well known as a chronic cocaine user
and frequent client of local prostitutes.

In addition to providing the government with arms, Minin was involved in the
diamond trade and operated a logging company called Exotic Tropical Timber
Enterprise. Alex Vines, who served on the U.N. panel of experts that
reported on Liberia, says Minin supplied arms to Taylor in the hopes of
winning timber concessions for his firm.

The key to Minin's success was his intimate tie to Taylor. So close were the
two men that in late 1998, Minin turned over his personal jet to Taylor for
use as Liberia's presidential plane. The aircraft--a $ 2 million, 27-seat
BAC 1-11 that Minin bought through an Orlando, Florida-based firm called
Cortran International--had previously served as the team plane for the
N.B.A.'s Seattle Supersonics. Taylor was so anxious to use it that he never
bothered to paint over the club's insignia on the tail. As soon as he took
possession, Taylor dispatched the plane to Niger to pick up a consignment of
weapons from the armed forces, which were brought back to Liberia and sent
to the RUF. A few days after receiving the arms, the rebels launched a
bloody offensive that left at least 5,000 people dead and ultimately gave
the RUF control of the country's best diamond fields. Taylor himself flew on
Minin's plane to attend regional peace negotiations in Togo and to attend
the presidential inauguration in Nigeria.

Lou Leggett of Cortran became friendly with Minin and traveled with him to
Monaco and Rome, both cities where Minin maintained multimillion-dollar
homes. Leggett--who says he was unaware of his friend's involvement with
weapons or drugs--also flew with Minin to Odessa and Moscow in the hopes of
meeting potential clients for Cortran. He recalls that when Minin's plane
landed at the airport, a team of heavily armed bodyguards would rush to
greet it. "Everywhere we went these guys would surround the plane," he says.
"It scared the hell out of me."

In the course of conducting business, Minin travelled frequently between
Africa and Europe, with Italy becoming a primary base for his operations.
His lifestyle was hardly extravagant, at least in the conventional sense. At
Cinisello Balsamo, he generally stayed at the Hotel Europa, of which he was
the majority owner. He also owned a small apartment in a drab six-story
building, located on an industrial strip that is home to a Kodak plant, a
tire factory, and a boarded-up electronic store outlet. According to law
enforcement authorities, Minin preferred a Ukrainian diet of cabbages,
potatoes, and onions to expensive restaurant fare. He did have an enormous
appetite for sex and drugs, however, which proved to be his downfall.

The man in charge of the Minin investigation is Salvatore la Barbera, who in
the early 1990s led the successful probe into the Cosa Nostra hit on two
anti-Mafia judges, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. Now head of the
state police's organized crime unit in Milan, la Barbera said that he had
been alarmed by the material turned over to his office by the local police
in Cinisello Balsamo. "It is not common that we investigate when the crimes
are committed in a foreign country, but it was felt to be important as [the
evidence suggested Minin] might be part of an international criminal
organization," he observed during an interview at police headquarters.

La Barbera recently concluded his work and sent a report to Mapelli, the
prosecutor, who works in the nearby town of Monza. It's a charming place
with windy stone streets and a famous cathedral that holds the jeweled crown
worn by Charlemagne when he was crowned emperor of the West in the year 800,
but Mapelli's office sits on a bland stretch amid apartment buildings, a gas
station and a McDonald's. Mapelli showed me some of the documents that
investigators used to piece together the two specific weapons deals that led
to the court charges Minin now faces. The first transaction took place in
March 1999, when Minin helped ship 68 tons of weapons from the Ukraine to
Burkina Faso. The latter country, which could legally buy arms, served
merely as a brief pass- through point for the operation. From there, Minin's
private jet carried the weapons to Monrovia in a series of back-to-back
flights. Part of the materiel remained with Taylor's forces and the rest was
sent on to the RUF.

Minin organized the second deal, which took place 16 months later, with the
help of Valery Cherny, a longtime Moscow-based associate. Ukraine once again
supplied the weapons--113 tons of materiel, including assault rifles,
grenade launchers, night-vision equipment, and eight million rounds of
ammunition--but this time the Ivory Coast served as the cutout. After being
flown there, the weapons were transferred to a waiting plane that carried
them on to Monrovia. The end-user for the deal, according to documents found
in Minin's briefcase, was provided by Ivory Coast dictator General Robert
Guei, who was overthrown in a coup three months later. "Minin may have been
taking part in other criminal activities, but what we know for certain is
that he arranged these two deals," Mapelli said.

As the prosecution prepares for trial, Minin seems to be having a hard time
mounting his defense. By all appearances he's a highly temperamental man and
has already gone through four attorneys, most recently Pietro Traini from
Milan. I had an interview scheduled with Traini, but Minin fired him a few
days before I arrived in Italy and he said that he could no longer discuss
specifics of the case. "I represented him for three months only and I am
very tired," he said with a shake of his head. "He is a difficult, difficult
client." Minin's civil attorney in Rome, Giorgio Sbarbara, is seeking new
criminal representation for his client. He, too, refused to comment on the
case other than to say that Minin is "refuting all the charges."

For his part, Minin--who is not allowed to speak with the press--denies any
involvement in the arms trade. During an interrogation with investigators,
Minin claimed that the documents found in his hotel room belonged to Valery
Cherny, and that he had inadvertently slipped them into his briefcase when
the two men met in Bulgaria a few days prior to his arrest.

Meanwhile, groups like Human Rights Watch and Global Witness are pressing
governments to take steps to restrict the black-market trade. One suggestion
is to establish a centralized international agency to authenticate end-user
certificates, which would minimize the use of forged documents. In March
2000, a U.N. panel recommended that sanctions be imposed on any nation that
deliberately violates international arms embargoes.

U.S. officials would not provide details about the government's initiatives:
"The problem is being addressed at a classified level," one explained. In
off the record conversations, they say that because virtually all
black-market transfers take place outside the U.S., American officials can
only pass on information to foreign law enforcement agencies and urge them
to take action. Perhaps the greatest possibility to pressure Eastern
European governments is in regard to NATO membership. "Almost all of them
want to join and we need to let them know that facilitating black market
sales will not increase their chances," says one source.

Of course, the broader problem is that in the weapons business, as with the
drug trade, there is an abundance of buyers and sellers. "Minin is important
but he's not unique," says Alex Vines. "There are plenty of others like him
who Taylor and others can turn to if they want to buy weapons."

Submit your nominations now for The Washington Monthly's Annual Political
Book Award.

Nominees should be nonfiction books published in calendar year 2001 that
demonstrate a commitment to the public interest. Publishers should send two
copies of the book to: The Washington Monthly, 733 15th Street, NW, Suite
1000, Washington, DC 20005.

The 2001 winners, to be announced in our March 2002 issue.

RELATED ARTICLE: The CIA's favorite gunrunner.

In addition to secrecy, arms dealers provide a commodity dear to all
intelligence agencies, namely plausible deniability in the event that an
illegal or embarrassing operation comes to light. "Deniability is crucial,"
explains a former CIA man who ran major covert operations during the 1980s,
and who, like many insiders willing to discuss the arms trade, would only
speak anonymously. "The last thing you want is a paper trail that leads back
to Langley, Virginia."

One man upon whom U.S. intelligence agencies frequently relied upon to hide
the paper trail is Sarkis Soghanalian, whose 40-year career in the arms
business began when he armed Christian militias in Lebanon at the request of
the CIA and who subsequently supplied a variety of America's Third World
friends. Soghanalian's operations were hardly a secret. He had offices in
Miami and during the mid-1980s allowed a CNN reporter to fly with him to
Iraq (then allied with the U.S. against Iran) and film him discussing
business with military officers. Soghanalian's contacts to U.S. intelligence
agencies were impressive. When former CIA deputy, director Daniel Murphy
traveled to Panama in 1987 and tried to convince General Manuel Noriega to
cede power, he flew on Soghanalian's private jet.

Over the years, U.S. Customs, the FBI, and a number of other government
agencies investigated Soghanalian. In 1981, a federal grand jury indicted
him for brokering the sale of machine guns to Mauritania. He faced 15 years
in prison if convicted, but a plea bargain was struck--after Soghanalian's
attorney submitted a sealed court statement describing his "great assistance
to the United States"--that resulted in a sentence of five years probation.
Ten years later, after the Gulf War definitively shattered U.S. ties to
Saddam Hussein, Soghanalian was convicted for conspiring to sell combat
helicopters to Iraq. He was sentenced to six years but released after only a
year in prison in exchange for helping U.S. officials smash a Middle East
counterfeiting ring. Last year, Soghanalian was again in U.S. court, this
time in Los Angeles where he faced charges for allegedly cashing stolen
checks for more than $ 3 million. Once again, prosecutors negotiated a plea
bargain, even as Peruvian authorities sought to question Soghanalian about
his suspected role in a recent illegal arms deal in South America. The terms
of the deal were not disclosed, but in exchange for providing useful
information to the government Soghanalian got off with time served.

Keith Prager, a former U.S. Customs agent who helped lead the investigation
and prosecution of Soghanalian for the Iraqi helicopter sales, says the
whole case was bizarre. Soghanalian boasted of high-level contacts--he had
pictures of himself with various Reagan administration officials that tended
to back him up--and complained that the CIA approved his actions in Iraq but
later abandoned him. Meanwhile, the agency provided virtually no assistance
to prosecutors as they prepared for trial. "In an arms-trafficking case, you
never know who's on your side," Prager says. "If it suits their purposes,
[intelligence agencies] will allow you to pursue the case; if not, they'll
try to derail you."

RELATED ARTICLE: The Taliban's favorite gunrunner.

Of all the arms dealers who have emerged since the end of the Cold War,
Victor Bout stands out as today's leading merchant of death. He heads a
network that the U.N. has described as "well-funded, well-connected, and
well-versed in brokering and logistics, with the ability to move illicit
cargo around the world without raising the suspicions of law enforcement."

Bout, who is believed to be only 35 years old, was born in Tashkent. He
trained with the Russian air force and worked with the KGB, which helped him
develop a network of military and intelligence contacts in the former Soviet
bloc. Currently residing in the United Arab Emirates, he is said to have
five passport, utilizes as many as seven aliases, and does business with
arms trading companies in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Africa. Bout
uses five airlines that he owns to ship the weapons he sells; he has a total
fleet of at least 60 planes and employs 300 people. According to a report
from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, he operates
in at least nine countries in Africa and takes payment in cash, diamonds,
and other gemstones.

Bout's earliest arms deals were in Afghanistan, where in 1995 he was arming
the government against the Taliban, which took power the following year.
According to a source familiar with his activities, the Taliban interdicted
one of Bout's supply flights, which led him to change clients. "He's a very
enterprising person," says this source. "When his plane was detained, he
used the opportunity as a business introduction to the Taliban."

In Africa, Bout has fueled every recent major conflict. In the mid-1990s, he
allegedly supplied Hum radicals from Rwanda who had earlier murdered nearly
one million Tutsis. In Angola, he has armed both sides of the fighting in a
two-decades -long civil war, though he has favored the rebel group known as
UNITA, which is under a blanket U.N. arms embargo. Bout has sold UNITA
everything from heavy weapons to light arms, mostly bought from Bulgarian
sources. Bout has recently been active in the Democratic Republic of Congo,
where he has provided fuel, arms, and transport planes for rebel groups.

Bout is considered such a serious threat that the U.S. government has a
concerted program aimed at putting him out of business, and preferably in
jail. The reason for the government's concern is not only the geographic
scope of Bout's activities, but that no other broker has the logistical
capability to supply both small arms and major weapons systems. American
officials say Bout has supplied the Taylor regime with helicopter gunships,
and he is believed to have sold tanks to other clients. "If you are a
terrorist or a rogue head of state and you have a problem relating to
weapons, Victor is the man to call," says former National Security Council
official Lee Wolosky.

Together with the British--who have deployed troops in West Africa that
could be targeted by weapons supplied by Bout--the U.S. has been quietly
pressuring governments that have harbored Bout. The strategy has not
resulted in his arrest, but it has required him to shift his operations.
South Africa forced him out a few years ago, leading Bout to take up
residence in Sharja in the UAE. The Emirates has not thus far deported
Bout--and given that the UAE is a close American and British ally, that
probably means he is paying off top officials--but it has reportedly put him
on a tighter leash. "This is a new type of problem and we're at the early
stages of combating these criminal syndicates," says Wolosky. "To a certain
extent we're still groping."




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