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 
hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL. 


03/06/08 17:03  EST





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