September 30, 2025 • 16 mins
Provides a comprehensive overview of Viktor Bout's extensive and controversial air transportation network, highlighting his alleged involvement in global arms trafficking, particularly in conflict zones across Africa and Afghanistan. The text explores Bout's cunning business practices, his ability to exploit loopholes in international law, and his close ties to various warlords, rebel groups, and even some governments. It also details the struggles of international bodies like the UN and various national intelligence agencies to track and counter his operations, often due to a lack of coordinated effort, legal frameworks, and political will. Furthermore, the excerpts reveal the paradoxical situation of Bout's companies being contracted by the U.S. military for logistical support in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite his blacklisted status, underscoring the complexities and moral compromises in international logistics and conflict.
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You can listen and download our episodes for free on more than 10 different platforms:
https://linktr.ee/book_shelter
Get the Book now from Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Merchant-Death-Money-Planes-Possible/dp/047026196X?&linkCode=ll1&tag=cvthunderx-20&linkId=3f991f4fbed2a6ae084e99d4ac0b911a&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the deep Dive. Today, we are going deep
into the story of a truly remarkable and deeply troubling figure,
Victor Bout, a.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Name that really became synonymous with, well, the dark side
of globalization exactly.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Picture this. It's nineteen ninety nine. You've got Whitney Schneidman,
a US State Department official, looking at these absolutely grim intelligence.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Reports, and they're painting a picture of Africa just a
blaze with conflict, horrifying stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Totally Ciri Leone. You had the RUF rebels. I mean,
the atrocities were unspeakable, murder, mass mutilation, gang rape, thousands executed.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
That whole short sleeved or long sleeve thing. Yeah, it's
just chilling choosing how your arm gets amputated.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
It's hard to even comprehend. And it wasn't just Siria
Leone UN plane shot down at Angola, war crime, Sudan
bombing town's DRC Liberia under Charles Taylor, just endless conflict, a.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Desperate need for peace, but something or rather someone was
actively pouring fuel on the fire.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
And that someone was Victor Bout. He wasn't just a player,
he was the player in many ways. Thanks to his
near monopoly on air transport for this illicit.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Trade which made him this incredibly urgent threat.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Right, and our main source for getting under the skin
of this story is the book Merchant of Death, Money, Guns, Planes,
and the Man Who Makes War Possible by Douglas Farrah
and Stephen Braun.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
It's incredibly detailed, a fantastic piece of investigative journalism.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
So our mission for you today is to unpack this
almost unbelievable story. How about built his empire, his let's say,
controversial business methods, the chase to stop him, and all
the crazy ironies along the way.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
We want you to understand not just the who, but
the how? How did he get so powerful? Why was
he so hard to.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Stop giving you that shortcut to being really well informed
on this shadowy part of recent history.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Okay, so Victor bout where do you even start? His
origins are well murkys deliberately so, it seems, right.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Born Victor Ntalaevich about January thirteenth, nineteen sixty seven. But
where to show to Jikistan Oshkabat, Turkmenistan. Nobody's quite sure.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Whether an auto mechanic mother a bookkeeper. Pretty standard background
on paper, but then a South African report calls him
Ukrainian with German roots. His interpool warrants at Smolensk.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Russia, so confusion from the get go.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
A man of mystery, but definitely not just some random guy.
He had a serious education Moscow's Military Institute of Foreign
Languages nineteen eighty seven to ninety.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
One, which was a known feeder for Soviet intelligence right
the GRU.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Exactly a GRU pipeline. He also got an economics degree
from a Russian military college, and his language skills phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Near perfect English, French, Spanish, and.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
He claimed fluency or familiarity with ex Josa Zulu, German, Portuguese, Farsi, Urdu.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
The list goes on, and that stint in Mozambique that seems.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Key, absolutely two years there that was likely his introduction
to Africa, but also crucially to the existing Russian intelligence
and GRU arms pipelines.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
He wasn't building from nothing, he was plugging into something
already there, the new face of the old pipeline, as
one analyst put it precisely.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
And then the collapse of the Soviet Union in nineteen
ninety one about still under thirty saw his moment.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
All those abandoned Soviet planes.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Thousands of pilots out of work, hundreds of Antonovs and
Elysians just sitting on airfields, huge sturdy planes.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Noisy, maybe not pretty, but built.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Tough, built to last, and crucially built for rough landings
on short, unpaved runways, often without air traffic control, perfect
for remote war.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Zones where modern cargo planes just couldn't go.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
He started snapping them up, old planes, sometimes dirt cheap
and an ate for maybe twenty thousand or thirty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
And that plane could make him thirty thousand dollars a
week in a place like Angola. The return on investment
was insane.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
His genius was seeing the potential in this junk, retrofitting them,
making them air worthy again. And because they were often
written off, they became harder to track internationally.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Creating this ghost fleet almost.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
And he was ruthless business that story with Alexander Cidorenko.
After they fell out about just kept using Ciderenko's company
name and call signs for like two hundred flights.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Wow, just brazen.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
He had this incredible business mind though, like Milo Minderbinder
from Catch twenty two. The book notes his motto was
never fly empty, so weapons one way and legitimate cargo
the other way. Flowers from South Africa to Dubai, apparently
making one hundred dollars profit on each Gladiola twenty tons
per flight.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Better than printing money, and associate said exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
He flew ikea furniture electronics beef chicken. He even claimed
his vision was a legitimate airline like Virgin Atlantic.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
A legitimate vision funded by well death and destruction. Because
he became the number one private supplier and transporter.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Of weapons dominated that gray market. He always says that
I'm just transport, you know, I never touched the.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Arms, a convenient denial because his planes did carry legal
stuff too, humanitarian aids. Sometimes he gave him.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Cover and the laws just hadn't caught up. They were
designed for state to state sales, not these shadowy middlemen
operating across borders.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
So he could slip through the cracks of un embargoes
without breaking specific national laws.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Often, yes, customs officials rarely had their resources or maybe
the inclination, to check if the cargo matched the manifest
in some of these chaotic ports.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
So how did he get away with it for so long,
those connections must have been crucial.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Absolutely critical. He dealt directly with the worst of the worst. Yeah,
Charles Taylor in Liberia, Mabutu and Zaiir Kagame in Rwanda,
Savimbia and Angola.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Jean Pierre Bemba and the DRC Sam Mosquito Bakery and
Sierra Leone.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
He cultivated these relationships, like with Bemba, flying in cases
of beer for him. Bemba controlled diamond fields worth millions
a month, so.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Bout wasn't just a supplier. He was servicing these warlords,
going the extra.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Mile, even sleeping next to his helicopter, ready to bolt
if needed. He had this brash confidence too. Apparently, once
lectured a crowd and fluent French about a Bible verse
that annoyed him.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
And payment wasn't always cash, was it.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
No, Often it was minerals, blood diamonds from Taylor, cold
tan from Congo, emeralds from Massoud in Afghanistan. He even
hired a gemalogist, just incredible.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Meanwhile, the human cost sior Leone again, Operation No Living Thing,
Operation pay Yourself.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Carried out by child soldiers drugged up ruf carved into
their chests using the very weapons Bout likely flew in, and.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
The victims that amputee and war wounded tamp the whole
short sleeved or long sleeve choice. It's sickening.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
His protection network was key, those carefully cultivated friendships with
big men, as the book calls them. That time a
cop in Congo let him go after illegal filming, that
wasn't luck.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
It required help from the very highest levels.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Definitely, And despite being socially awkward, apparently quite contentious of
the African leaders he dealt with, he had his own
security gru trained Russians, heavily armed, low profile.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
He wasn't just a businessman. He was operating like a
state actor in some ways, and.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
His ambition just kept growing. That proposed in Monrovia in
ninety nine to Ibrahim Bob Mosquito Bokri offering weapons for free,
for free if the RUF attacked specific abandoned mines in
Sierra Leone. He wanted the rutile the titanium war.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
So he wasn't just supplying conflicts anymore, he was trying
to direct them for resources. Moving beyond logistics, it.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Showed his endgame was much bigger than just guns, he
was about controlling resources, leveraging conflict for direct economic game, and.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
His operational hub for all this Sharja in the UAE.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Yeah, he moved there in ninety three, saw it as
a secure base and it was perfect for him at
the time. Why well, oversight was notoriously lax, low taxes,
weak financial regulations. Money laundering wasn't even a specific crime
there until two thousand and two.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
And lots of Russian expats exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
A big mall full of Russians. Someone called it easy
to blend in, easy to move money in goods, duty
free shopping brought them in.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
His first company there, Transavia Travel Agency, sounds innocent enough.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Rabble cargo tourist firm, a perfect cover, and the legitimate
side shipping goods back to Russia was booming. That Gladiola
example again, that was real profit funding the illicit side.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Twenty tons of flowers per flight, one hundred dollars profit
per flower. It really was like printing money.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
But all that cash flowing through drew attention. Eventually. That
HSBC internal audit in ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Found money laundering on a massive scale in Russian accounts there.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, including a group linked to Bouts network, the Semonchenko
group via Sanair General trading huge turnovers on piny declared incomes.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Like that Guy cockerof eight hundred and seventeen dollars a
month income one point five million dollar turnover in three months,
including a transfer from the Uzbeck Ministry of Defense.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
The bank itself admitted it was guilty of money laundering
in that case. It shows how the system itself was
enabling this.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And to keep ahead, he played that show game with
his planes.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Constantly re registering them. Liberia under Taylor was basically a
criminal enterprise offering flags of convenience Swaziland, Equatorial Guinea, Central African.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Republic wherever oversight was weakest, and his associate Michael Herrodine
actually ran the registries for Liberia and Equatorial Guinea.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yes, talk about embedding yourself in the system you're exploiting now.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Afghanistan, that's another complex layer. He worked for the government first.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
So Rabani government, yeah, fro ninety two to ninety six.
But then logically, as the book says, he shifted to
the Taliban when they took over.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
They needed weapons to consolidate power and arm Al Qaeda
and Bout provided.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Despite his constant denials, I never traded arms. The evidence
is overwhelming, Taliban documents, intel reports. The US Treasury estimated
he made fifty million dollars from Taliban.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Deals, selling them heavy cargo planes to Antonov's twelve.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Of them, apparently between ninety eight and two thousand and one,
crucial for moving weapons and fighters. Later, US troops found
huge stockpiles at Kandahar Airport Kalashnikoff's RPG's ammal, all mixed together,
likely bouts deliveries.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
His connections were everything, princes, kings and presidents. The book
says even his pilots getting out of Taliban captivity extracted,
not escaped, suggests help.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Oh yeah, Russian government and military links especially gru were
just assumed by the CIA. He flew Mbutu, Taylor, even
the wife of Gambia's dictator into Washington Dullas.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
The audacity is just staggering. So how did the world
try to stop him?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Well, it was a long, slow game of cat and mouse.
US intelligence saw traces back in ninety five Nessay intercepts satellite.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
But they were focused on the conflicts, not the source
of the weapon.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Largely, Yes, and Africa back then was seen as a
diplomatic backwater and intelligence wasteland for the US CIA coverage
was spotty.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
It was NGO's and individuals who often sounded the first alarms,
wasn't it Yes?
Speaker 2 (10:45):
People like Katy Austin Alex Vines from Human Rights Watch.
They saw the planes were key, saw Bout grow into
a monster. E. J. Hogandoran wrote an early report on
Austin Airport in Belgium.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Austin became a hotspot for a while.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
By ninety seven, Belgian police started investigating all the illusion
flights landing there. Bout's operation tan An just folded and
morphed into air cess. Investigators found the office abandoned, rent.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Unpaid, classic Bout always moving.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Johann Pellman, a Belgian expert, was vital for the UN
panels investigating arms flows to Angola and Sierra Leone starting
around ninety nine. He really highlighted the lack of laws
and political will to stop middleman like Bout.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Around the same time, the US approach started shifting under Clinton.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Right towards transnational threats, drugs, crime terror, seeing them as linked.
Richard Clark at the NSC.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Pushed this hard dating Task forces.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Yeah, the Counter Terrorism Security Group the Office for Transnational Threats,
but he faced push back internally. FBI Justice Department felt
he was encroaching on their turf hampered coordination.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
But the hunt for Bout himself did intensify dramatically.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
From ninety nine, Whitney Scheinman at State got that stunning
SCIENSA briefing satellite photos of Bouts planes in Charga intercepted calls.
Bout became top target.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Lee Laski at NSC joined the chase in two thousand,
saw about as this dangerous Russian plutocrat.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
So the pressure mounted. The UN Security Council publicly named
him in March two thousand for breaking the Angola embargo,
and he.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Almost walked into the US. That Texas venture.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yeah August two thousand, trying to get a visa in
Abu Dhabi for a plastic parts factory with his associate
Richard Chichocli. Visa denied, but ATF then found Airsas had
a Miami branch a US registered jet. He was closer
than they realized.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Then came that Greek near miss in two thousand and
two that sounds like something from a spy movie.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Totally solid intel Bouts on a flight Moldova de Greece.
Britz sen an ENCRYPTID message.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
For the arrest plane vanishes from radar, then reappears exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Greek and British special forces stormed the plane, empty except
for pilots and a few others.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
And Bout pops up in the DRC less than twenty
four hours later.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
The confirmed sighting by Belgian intelligence the chilling conclusion from
European intel. Only the Russians or the Americans could have
decrypted that British warning message, and it wasn't the Russians, implying, oh,
implying someone tipped him off.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Which leads us to the ultimate paradox post nine to eleven. Bout,
the guy who armed the Taliban.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Suddenly finds his network working for the US military.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
How does that even happen?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
It's a textbookcase, the book says, of shoddy postwar planning
and bureaucratic blindness. His planes were needed for the airlifts
into Iraq and Afghanistan.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Needed or just convenient.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Probably both. Major Christopher Walker, the US Air National Guard
officer running airspace at Baghdad International Airport for the CPA.
He discovered Bout's planes flying under the name RBIs, a
known front for air Bay were on the official manifests.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Flying supplies for US forces and contractors the very forces
fighting the groups he used to.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Arm precisely, Walker in general Oster Bremer's deputy, realized they
had a massive pr problem when The Financial Times broke
the story in May two thousand and.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Four, and Walker's recommendation phase him out quietly yeah, through.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
The contractors to avoid disrupting the supply chain. That infamous
quote attributed to him. If the government really wanted him bad,
they could have seized his planes. But I guess they
looked at Victor Bowden figured this guy's an asshole, but
he's our asshole, so let's keep him.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
In business, our asshole. That sums up the messy reality,
doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
It really does. There's political pushback Senator Fangl asking questions.
The Pentagon initially denied it, obfuscated.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Wolfowitz eventually admitted it, though subcontracts yes acknowledged.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Using second tier providers who leased aircraft owned by companies
associated with mister Bout attributed to organizational lapses, lack of
watch lists, unchecked subcontractors, systemic failure again.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
And bow just kept going, expanding even oh.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, into Sudan, Libya, flying gold for militants from Pakistan
to the UAE and Iran, and still brokering huge arms
deals like that two hundred and ten ton shipment from
Belgrade to Charles Taylor in Liberia.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Helicopters, missiles, armored vehicles, a million rounds of AMMO.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Flights, yeah, sometimes just fresh fish going to Slovakia. Never
fly empty, always maximizing profit, no matter the context.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
So after all that fifteen years of this, his empire
just endured pretty much.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Sanctions were half hearted, The big international hunt fizzled out.
CIA analysts moved to counter Terrorism Post nine to eleven.
The Interpol warrant stayed open, but Russia wouldn't extradite only
the British kept a small team.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
On him, and he just kept adapting constantly.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
New company names. Airbas became other firms used disguises, operated
from Dubai just now in Moldova. Almadi and Kazakhstan claimed
he was in construction in.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Russia, but still linked to aviation firms doing questionable flights.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
The mystique just grew, leading right into popular culture. That
two thousand and five movie Lord of.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
War with Nicholas Cage loosely based on bout right.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Very loosely, But the director Andrew Nichol actually rented one
of Bout's real planes for filming.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
You're kidding, Nope, a.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Plane that Nichol said ran real guns into the Congo
the week before we were using it to film fake guns.
You can't make this stuff up.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
It perfectly captures the blurred lines. So wrapping this up,
what's the big takeaway?
Speaker 2 (16:10):
I think the book leaves us with the really provocative thought,
how do you actually stop someone.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Like Bout when the system itself seems to create the
conditions for them?
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Exactly, international hypocrisy, the chaos after the Cold War, it
was the perfect storm. Bout just saw the business opportunity
in servicing failed states and rebel armies.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
And the question remains, right, in a world still full
of conflict, how do you hold people accountable who profit
from that.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Chaos, especially when sometimes powerful actors find them yeah useful?
What does it mean when the system meant to stop
guys like Bout ends up relying on them, even accidentally.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
A difficult question and definitely something for all of us
and for you listening to think about
Welcome to the deep Dive. Today, we are going deep
into the story of a truly remarkable and deeply troubling figure,
Victor Bout, a.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Name that really became synonymous with, well, the dark side
of globalization exactly.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Picture this. It's nineteen ninety nine. You've got Whitney Schneidman,
a US State Department official, looking at these absolutely grim intelligence.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Reports, and they're painting a picture of Africa just a
blaze with conflict, horrifying stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Totally Ciri Leone. You had the RUF rebels. I mean,
the atrocities were unspeakable, murder, mass mutilation, gang rape, thousands executed.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
That whole short sleeved or long sleeve thing. Yeah, it's
just chilling choosing how your arm gets amputated.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
It's hard to even comprehend. And it wasn't just Siria
Leone UN plane shot down at Angola, war crime, Sudan
bombing town's DRC Liberia under Charles Taylor, just endless conflict, a.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Desperate need for peace, but something or rather someone was
actively pouring fuel on the fire.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
And that someone was Victor Bout. He wasn't just a player,
he was the player in many ways. Thanks to his
near monopoly on air transport for this illicit.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Trade which made him this incredibly urgent threat.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Right, and our main source for getting under the skin
of this story is the book Merchant of Death, Money, Guns, Planes,
and the Man Who Makes War Possible by Douglas Farrah
and Stephen Braun.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
It's incredibly detailed, a fantastic piece of investigative journalism.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
So our mission for you today is to unpack this
almost unbelievable story. How about built his empire, his let's say,
controversial business methods, the chase to stop him, and all
the crazy ironies along the way.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
We want you to understand not just the who, but
the how? How did he get so powerful? Why was
he so hard to.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Stop giving you that shortcut to being really well informed
on this shadowy part of recent history.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Okay, so Victor bout where do you even start? His
origins are well murkys deliberately so, it seems, right.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Born Victor Ntalaevich about January thirteenth, nineteen sixty seven. But
where to show to Jikistan Oshkabat, Turkmenistan. Nobody's quite sure.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Whether an auto mechanic mother a bookkeeper. Pretty standard background
on paper, but then a South African report calls him
Ukrainian with German roots. His interpool warrants at Smolensk.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Russia, so confusion from the get go.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
A man of mystery, but definitely not just some random guy.
He had a serious education Moscow's Military Institute of Foreign
Languages nineteen eighty seven to ninety.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
One, which was a known feeder for Soviet intelligence right
the GRU.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Exactly a GRU pipeline. He also got an economics degree
from a Russian military college, and his language skills phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Near perfect English, French, Spanish, and.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
He claimed fluency or familiarity with ex Josa Zulu, German, Portuguese, Farsi, Urdu.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
The list goes on, and that stint in Mozambique that seems.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Key, absolutely two years there that was likely his introduction
to Africa, but also crucially to the existing Russian intelligence
and GRU arms pipelines.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
He wasn't building from nothing, he was plugging into something
already there, the new face of the old pipeline, as
one analyst put it precisely.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
And then the collapse of the Soviet Union in nineteen
ninety one about still under thirty saw his moment.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
All those abandoned Soviet planes.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Thousands of pilots out of work, hundreds of Antonovs and
Elysians just sitting on airfields, huge sturdy planes.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Noisy, maybe not pretty, but built.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Tough, built to last, and crucially built for rough landings
on short, unpaved runways, often without air traffic control, perfect
for remote war.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Zones where modern cargo planes just couldn't go.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
He started snapping them up, old planes, sometimes dirt cheap
and an ate for maybe twenty thousand or thirty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
And that plane could make him thirty thousand dollars a
week in a place like Angola. The return on investment
was insane.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
His genius was seeing the potential in this junk, retrofitting them,
making them air worthy again. And because they were often
written off, they became harder to track internationally.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Creating this ghost fleet almost.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
And he was ruthless business that story with Alexander Cidorenko.
After they fell out about just kept using Ciderenko's company
name and call signs for like two hundred flights.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Wow, just brazen.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
He had this incredible business mind though, like Milo Minderbinder
from Catch twenty two. The book notes his motto was
never fly empty, so weapons one way and legitimate cargo
the other way. Flowers from South Africa to Dubai, apparently
making one hundred dollars profit on each Gladiola twenty tons
per flight.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Better than printing money, and associate said exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
He flew ikea furniture electronics beef chicken. He even claimed
his vision was a legitimate airline like Virgin Atlantic.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
A legitimate vision funded by well death and destruction. Because
he became the number one private supplier and transporter.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Of weapons dominated that gray market. He always says that
I'm just transport, you know, I never touched the.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Arms, a convenient denial because his planes did carry legal
stuff too, humanitarian aids. Sometimes he gave him.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Cover and the laws just hadn't caught up. They were
designed for state to state sales, not these shadowy middlemen
operating across borders.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
So he could slip through the cracks of un embargoes
without breaking specific national laws.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Often, yes, customs officials rarely had their resources or maybe
the inclination, to check if the cargo matched the manifest
in some of these chaotic ports.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
So how did he get away with it for so long,
those connections must have been crucial.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Absolutely critical. He dealt directly with the worst of the worst. Yeah,
Charles Taylor in Liberia, Mabutu and Zaiir Kagame in Rwanda,
Savimbia and Angola.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Jean Pierre Bemba and the DRC Sam Mosquito Bakery and
Sierra Leone.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
He cultivated these relationships, like with Bemba, flying in cases
of beer for him. Bemba controlled diamond fields worth millions
a month, so.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Bout wasn't just a supplier. He was servicing these warlords,
going the extra.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Mile, even sleeping next to his helicopter, ready to bolt
if needed. He had this brash confidence too. Apparently, once
lectured a crowd and fluent French about a Bible verse
that annoyed him.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
And payment wasn't always cash, was it.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
No, Often it was minerals, blood diamonds from Taylor, cold
tan from Congo, emeralds from Massoud in Afghanistan. He even
hired a gemalogist, just incredible.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Meanwhile, the human cost sior Leone again, Operation No Living Thing,
Operation pay Yourself.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Carried out by child soldiers drugged up ruf carved into
their chests using the very weapons Bout likely flew in, and.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
The victims that amputee and war wounded tamp the whole
short sleeved or long sleeve choice. It's sickening.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
His protection network was key, those carefully cultivated friendships with
big men, as the book calls them. That time a
cop in Congo let him go after illegal filming, that
wasn't luck.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
It required help from the very highest levels.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Definitely, And despite being socially awkward, apparently quite contentious of
the African leaders he dealt with, he had his own
security gru trained Russians, heavily armed, low profile.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
He wasn't just a businessman. He was operating like a
state actor in some ways, and.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
His ambition just kept growing. That proposed in Monrovia in
ninety nine to Ibrahim Bob Mosquito Bokri offering weapons for free,
for free if the RUF attacked specific abandoned mines in
Sierra Leone. He wanted the rutile the titanium war.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
So he wasn't just supplying conflicts anymore, he was trying
to direct them for resources. Moving beyond logistics, it.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Showed his endgame was much bigger than just guns, he
was about controlling resources, leveraging conflict for direct economic game, and.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
His operational hub for all this Sharja in the UAE.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Yeah, he moved there in ninety three, saw it as
a secure base and it was perfect for him at
the time. Why well, oversight was notoriously lax, low taxes,
weak financial regulations. Money laundering wasn't even a specific crime
there until two thousand and two.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
And lots of Russian expats exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
A big mall full of Russians. Someone called it easy
to blend in, easy to move money in goods, duty
free shopping brought them in.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
His first company there, Transavia Travel Agency, sounds innocent enough.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Rabble cargo tourist firm, a perfect cover, and the legitimate
side shipping goods back to Russia was booming. That Gladiola
example again, that was real profit funding the illicit side.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Twenty tons of flowers per flight, one hundred dollars profit
per flower. It really was like printing money.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
But all that cash flowing through drew attention. Eventually. That
HSBC internal audit in ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Found money laundering on a massive scale in Russian accounts there.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, including a group linked to Bouts network, the Semonchenko
group via Sanair General trading huge turnovers on piny declared incomes.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Like that Guy cockerof eight hundred and seventeen dollars a
month income one point five million dollar turnover in three months,
including a transfer from the Uzbeck Ministry of Defense.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
The bank itself admitted it was guilty of money laundering
in that case. It shows how the system itself was
enabling this.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And to keep ahead, he played that show game with
his planes.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Constantly re registering them. Liberia under Taylor was basically a
criminal enterprise offering flags of convenience Swaziland, Equatorial Guinea, Central African.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Republic wherever oversight was weakest, and his associate Michael Herrodine
actually ran the registries for Liberia and Equatorial Guinea.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yes, talk about embedding yourself in the system you're exploiting now.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Afghanistan, that's another complex layer. He worked for the government first.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
So Rabani government, yeah, fro ninety two to ninety six.
But then logically, as the book says, he shifted to
the Taliban when they took over.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
They needed weapons to consolidate power and arm Al Qaeda
and Bout provided.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Despite his constant denials, I never traded arms. The evidence
is overwhelming, Taliban documents, intel reports. The US Treasury estimated
he made fifty million dollars from Taliban.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Deals, selling them heavy cargo planes to Antonov's twelve.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Of them, apparently between ninety eight and two thousand and one,
crucial for moving weapons and fighters. Later, US troops found
huge stockpiles at Kandahar Airport Kalashnikoff's RPG's ammal, all mixed together,
likely bouts deliveries.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
His connections were everything, princes, kings and presidents. The book
says even his pilots getting out of Taliban captivity extracted,
not escaped, suggests help.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Oh yeah, Russian government and military links especially gru were
just assumed by the CIA. He flew Mbutu, Taylor, even
the wife of Gambia's dictator into Washington Dullas.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
The audacity is just staggering. So how did the world
try to stop him?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Well, it was a long, slow game of cat and mouse.
US intelligence saw traces back in ninety five Nessay intercepts satellite.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
But they were focused on the conflicts, not the source
of the weapon.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Largely, Yes, and Africa back then was seen as a
diplomatic backwater and intelligence wasteland for the US CIA coverage
was spotty.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
It was NGO's and individuals who often sounded the first alarms,
wasn't it Yes?
Speaker 2 (10:45):
People like Katy Austin Alex Vines from Human Rights Watch.
They saw the planes were key, saw Bout grow into
a monster. E. J. Hogandoran wrote an early report on
Austin Airport in Belgium.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Austin became a hotspot for a while.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
By ninety seven, Belgian police started investigating all the illusion
flights landing there. Bout's operation tan An just folded and
morphed into air cess. Investigators found the office abandoned, rent.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Unpaid, classic Bout always moving.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Johann Pellman, a Belgian expert, was vital for the UN
panels investigating arms flows to Angola and Sierra Leone starting
around ninety nine. He really highlighted the lack of laws
and political will to stop middleman like Bout.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Around the same time, the US approach started shifting under Clinton.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Right towards transnational threats, drugs, crime terror, seeing them as linked.
Richard Clark at the NSC.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Pushed this hard dating Task forces.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Yeah, the Counter Terrorism Security Group the Office for Transnational Threats,
but he faced push back internally. FBI Justice Department felt
he was encroaching on their turf hampered coordination.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
But the hunt for Bout himself did intensify dramatically.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
From ninety nine, Whitney Scheinman at State got that stunning
SCIENSA briefing satellite photos of Bouts planes in Charga intercepted calls.
Bout became top target.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Lee Laski at NSC joined the chase in two thousand,
saw about as this dangerous Russian plutocrat.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
So the pressure mounted. The UN Security Council publicly named
him in March two thousand for breaking the Angola embargo,
and he.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Almost walked into the US. That Texas venture.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yeah August two thousand, trying to get a visa in
Abu Dhabi for a plastic parts factory with his associate
Richard Chichocli. Visa denied, but ATF then found Airsas had
a Miami branch a US registered jet. He was closer
than they realized.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Then came that Greek near miss in two thousand and
two that sounds like something from a spy movie.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Totally solid intel Bouts on a flight Moldova de Greece.
Britz sen an ENCRYPTID message.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
For the arrest plane vanishes from radar, then reappears exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Greek and British special forces stormed the plane, empty except
for pilots and a few others.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
And Bout pops up in the DRC less than twenty
four hours later.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
The confirmed sighting by Belgian intelligence the chilling conclusion from
European intel. Only the Russians or the Americans could have
decrypted that British warning message, and it wasn't the Russians, implying, oh,
implying someone tipped him off.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Which leads us to the ultimate paradox post nine to eleven. Bout,
the guy who armed the Taliban.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Suddenly finds his network working for the US military.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
How does that even happen?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
It's a textbookcase, the book says, of shoddy postwar planning
and bureaucratic blindness. His planes were needed for the airlifts
into Iraq and Afghanistan.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Needed or just convenient.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Probably both. Major Christopher Walker, the US Air National Guard
officer running airspace at Baghdad International Airport for the CPA.
He discovered Bout's planes flying under the name RBIs, a
known front for air Bay were on the official manifests.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Flying supplies for US forces and contractors the very forces
fighting the groups he used to.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Arm precisely, Walker in general Oster Bremer's deputy, realized they
had a massive pr problem when The Financial Times broke
the story in May two thousand and.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Four, and Walker's recommendation phase him out quietly yeah, through.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
The contractors to avoid disrupting the supply chain. That infamous
quote attributed to him. If the government really wanted him bad,
they could have seized his planes. But I guess they
looked at Victor Bowden figured this guy's an asshole, but
he's our asshole, so let's keep him.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
In business, our asshole. That sums up the messy reality,
doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
It really does. There's political pushback Senator Fangl asking questions.
The Pentagon initially denied it, obfuscated.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Wolfowitz eventually admitted it, though subcontracts yes acknowledged.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Using second tier providers who leased aircraft owned by companies
associated with mister Bout attributed to organizational lapses, lack of
watch lists, unchecked subcontractors, systemic failure again.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
And bow just kept going, expanding even oh.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, into Sudan, Libya, flying gold for militants from Pakistan
to the UAE and Iran, and still brokering huge arms
deals like that two hundred and ten ton shipment from
Belgrade to Charles Taylor in Liberia.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Helicopters, missiles, armored vehicles, a million rounds of AMMO.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Flights, yeah, sometimes just fresh fish going to Slovakia. Never
fly empty, always maximizing profit, no matter the context.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
So after all that fifteen years of this, his empire
just endured pretty much.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Sanctions were half hearted, The big international hunt fizzled out.
CIA analysts moved to counter Terrorism Post nine to eleven.
The Interpol warrant stayed open, but Russia wouldn't extradite only
the British kept a small team.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
On him, and he just kept adapting constantly.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
New company names. Airbas became other firms used disguises, operated
from Dubai just now in Moldova. Almadi and Kazakhstan claimed
he was in construction in.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Russia, but still linked to aviation firms doing questionable flights.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
The mystique just grew, leading right into popular culture. That
two thousand and five movie Lord of.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
War with Nicholas Cage loosely based on bout right.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Very loosely, But the director Andrew Nichol actually rented one
of Bout's real planes for filming.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
You're kidding, Nope, a.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Plane that Nichol said ran real guns into the Congo
the week before we were using it to film fake guns.
You can't make this stuff up.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
It perfectly captures the blurred lines. So wrapping this up,
what's the big takeaway?
Speaker 2 (16:10):
I think the book leaves us with the really provocative thought,
how do you actually stop someone.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Like Bout when the system itself seems to create the
conditions for them?
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Exactly, international hypocrisy, the chaos after the Cold War, it
was the perfect storm. Bout just saw the business opportunity
in servicing failed states and rebel armies.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
And the question remains, right, in a world still full
of conflict, how do you hold people accountable who profit
from that.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Chaos, especially when sometimes powerful actors find them yeah useful?
What does it mean when the system meant to stop
guys like Bout ends up relying on them, even accidentally.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
A difficult question and definitely something for all of us
and for you listening to think about
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