This guy is pretty interesting, and has definitely done some amazing things in the field of weapons delivery. But like most who walk the line between legal and illegal weapons delivery, you always face the potential of getting caught one day. Viktor made things happen out there, but at what price to self and others? But on the other hand, everyone has done business with the guy, because he could get things done in really crappy places. The movie Lord of War staring Nicolas Cage was about his exploits, and there are plenty of stories, books, and articles about him. And after he got caught in Thailand, the Economist wrote this recent article. –Matt
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International man of mystery
Flying anything to anybody
Dec 18th 2008
From The Economist print edition
The rise and fall of Viktor Bout, arms-dealer extraordinaire, shows a darker side of globalisation
VIKTOR BOUT knew, long before his plane lifted off from Moscow, that they meant to snatch him. For years he had hunkered down in the Russian capital, making only rare forays abroad. Western spies, the United Nations and do-gooder activists were after him. They said that he had smashed arms embargoes and struck deals with a remarkable axis of ne’er-do-wells: supplying weapons and air-transport to the Taliban, abetting despots and revolutionaries in Africa and South America, aiding Hizbullah in Lebanon and Islamists in Somalia. He also found time to supply American forces in Iraq, perhaps al-Qaeda too, and maybe even Chechen rebels.
He denied all wrongdoing and, no doubt, thought his accusers irritating and hypocritical. But until the fuss died away he knew that he was safe only in Russia, from where extradition was impossible.
Yet Mr Bout, a puzzling, amoral and intelligent man, made a poor choice in March, leaving behind his wife and daughter and flying to Bangkok. As a consequence he may end up in New York as the star of a trial that would provoke echoes of cold-war spy games, further chilling relations between the West and Russia.
A shy and plump man, for years his only public image was a grainy, Soviet-era passport photo. That shows a dumpy, youngish face, with drooping eyes peering above a thick, triangular, moustache—the sort one might buy in a joke shop. He was probably born in what is now Tajikistan but, as with the picture, details of his life are fuzzy. American prosecutors say that he uses at least half a dozen passports and more aliases, including “Butt”, “Budd”, “Boris”, “Bulakin” and “Aminov”. A gifted linguist, he slips easily between as many languages as he has names.