Viktor Bout at a Bangkok detention center May 19, 2009. APICHART WEERAWONG / AP
Triumphant return to Russia for Viktor Bout, the arms dealer traded for American basketball player Brittney Griner, on the tarmac of Abu Dhabi airport in the United Arab Emirates on Thursday December 8th. Immediately after the exchange, Russian television channels showed him on board a private jet en route to Moscow, having his blood pressure taken and calling his family. The State Department confirmed his release after 11 years in the United States, where he was serving a 25-year sentence for arms trafficking and supporting terrorism.
The 55-year-old former soldier, known abroad as the “dealer” who has fueled the bloodiest conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, is described at home as a patriot unjustly jailed by a vehemently anti-Russian government. The fact of aligning with the Taliban, al-Qaeda, former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who is serving fifty years in prison in the UK for crimes against humanity and war crimes, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, does not disqualify Russia against it . The media describe him as a cultivated craftsman, a vegetarian, and a painter in his free time. His paintings have also recently been exhibited by the Council of the Federation, the upper house of Parliament. The lower house, the Duma, has invited him to give a speech shortly.
His rise is as dazzling as it is mysterious. Lieutenant Bout, who worked as a translator for the Soviet Army in Angola and Mozambique in the late 1980s, decided to go into business after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. In Russia at this time, many military pilots are unemployed, aircraft are at a standstill, and the defense industry has inventory left. This obscure military interpreter will, in a few years, create the most extensive network of arms shipments to civil wars and dictatorships, especially in Africa, while lightly playing around with UN sanctions. His empire — $6 billion according to the Associated Press in 2008 — is an impossible web of opaque corporations. Above all, no one knows by what means he started his business.
don’t look at customers
In 1992, at the age of 25, he bought two Antonovs from the former Soviet Army. Officially used to transport flowers, furniture, frozen chickens. Air traffic is organized from South Africa, then from the United Arab Emirates. Success comes immediately. Four years later, the company has 160 aircraft and a thousand employees. Viktor Bout doesn’t look at the customers. In 1995, the cargo – 30 tons of weapons – he chartered by plane for Afghan leader Burhanuddin Rabbani fell into the hands of the Taliban, his enemies. During negotiations for the crew’s release, he takes the opportunity to sell her his services.
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