Viktor Bout is an arms dealer from Russia. He made weapons and was a translator for the Soviet army. In the 1990s and early 2000s, he used his many businesses to smuggle weapons from Eastern Europe to Africa and the Middle East.
Bout was nicknamed ‘Merchant of Death’ and ‘Sanctions Buster’ after British minister Peter Hain reported to the United Nations in 2003 about Bout’s extensive operations, large clientele and willingness to break embargoes.
Bout was arrested in Thailand in 2008 and charged with terrorism. The Royal Thai Police did this with the help of the US government and Interpol. The US ambassador to Thailand, Eric G. John, asked that he be returned to the US, and in 2010 the Thai Supreme Court agreed.
Bout was accused of trying to sell weapons to a US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) informant posing as a member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) so that the weapons could be used against US forces in Colombia. Bout denied the charges and thought he would not be found guilty.
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Early years
Viktor Anatolyevich Bout was born in Dushanbe, Tajik SSR, Soviet Union, on January 13, 1967. It is not clear where Bout came from. According to UN documents and Bout himself, he was born in Dushanbe, Tajik SSR, Soviet Union, now the capital of Tajikistan. His most likely birthday is January 13, 1967, but there are other possible dates. Sergei Bout is the name of his older brother.
According to South African intelligence and the British Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Bout was born in Ukraine. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, he became a Russian citizen. The Liberia Committee for the UN Security Council says that Bout has at least four passports.
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What is Viktor Bout’s net worth?
As of December 2022, Viktor Bout has an estimated net worth of $50 million (Source: Celebrity Net Worth). He made a million dollar empire through his work.
Some people have called Bout the “merchant of death,” while others have called him “one of the most dangerous men on the planet.” This is because in the 1990s he helped found the air cargo company Air Cess, which sold weapons around the world and fueled civil wars in several countries.
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Military career
Bout was in the Soviet army. Other than the fact that he graduated from the Soviet Military Institute of Foreign Languages, we don’t know much about his time in the military. Bout learned Portuguese, English, French, Arabic and Farsi through his education, making him a polyglot (Persian).
It is said that he speaks Esperanto well. He learned it when he was 12 and joined the Dushanbe Esperanto Club early eighties. On his website, Bout said he was a lieutenant in the Soviet Army and worked as a translator.
When the Soviet army disintegrated in 1991, Bout is said to have been discharged with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Then he started an air freight company. Other sources say he was a major in the GRU, an officer in the Soviet Air Force, a graduate of a Soviet military intelligence training program, or an agent of the KGB.
In the late eighties, Bout helped the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in the Angolan Civil War as part of a Soviet military operation in Angola. He has said he only spent a few weeks in Angola. During this time in Africa, he also learned to speak Xhosa and Zulu.
After the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Bout went to Moscow and said his plane regularly flew to Afghanistan, but he still denied any contact with al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Instead, he said, he was helping the rebel Northern Alliance.
Al-Qaeda allegedly extracted gold and cash from Afghanistan shortly after the war in Afghanistan began. In an interview with The New York Times in July 2003, Bout said, “I woke up after September 11 to discover I was only second to Osama.”
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A 2010 U.S. Justice Department indictment says Bout and Chichakli founded Samar Airlines in Tajikistan in 2004 to launder money and hide assets from authorities. Bout is said to have given weapons to many armed groups in Africa in the 2000s, especially during the Second Congo War in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He may have hired up to 300 people and piloted between 40 and 60 aircraft.
It is said that Bout’s network sent surface-to-air missiles to Kenya in 2002 so they could be used to attack an Israeli plane as it took off.
People say they saw Bout meet with Hezbollah officials in Lebanon before the 2006 Lebanon War, but some sources say he was actually in Russia at the time.
Documents found at Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s former intelligence headquarters in Tripoli shortly after the 2011 overthrow of Gaddafi’s government revealed that in late September 2003, British intelligence officials told Libyan intelligence chief Musa Kusa that Bout had made a “significant commercial presence in Libya” and wanted to grow his business there.
In 2007, the Los Angeles Times said the US government and its contractors paid about $60 million to Bolt-controlled companies to fly supplies to Iraq to help US troops. The newspaper called Bout a “lynchpin” of US supply lines in Iraq.
Research
Authorities had a hard time catching Bout because he moved around a lot, had multiple companies and often changed his aircraft registrations. He is known for alleged arms trafficking in Africa, but he has never been charged with anything.
In the time that Bout would have worked, he would have lived in different countries, such as Belgium, Lebanon, Rwanda, Russia, South Africa, Syria and the United Arab Emirates. In 2000, Bout was accused of making false documents in the Central African Republic. He was found guilty in his absence, but the charges were later dropped.
The Belgian government asked Interpol to warn Bout that he is wanted for money laundering. In 2002, Bout received a red warning from Interpol. Bout’s website states that a Belgian arrest warrant (not an Interpol notice) was issued for his arrest, as he failed to appear in court, but was later removed from the books.
The site contains a document written in Dutch that supports the claim that the Belgian case against him was dropped because he had no permanent place of residence and the case could not be brought to court in time.
In July 2004, Bout’s US assets were frozen due to Executive Order 13348. This order called him a “businessman, dealer and transporter of weapons and minerals” and said he was close to Charles Taylor.
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How was he captured by the police?
In early 2008, an American DEA informant said he worked for the Colombian rebel group FARC and did not work for the CIA, talked to Bout about sending 100 9K38 Igla surface-to-air missiles and armor-piercing missile launchers to Colombia by parachute. The counterfeits told Bout he could meet their leader in Thailand.
He was charged with terrorist crimes such as conspiracy to obtain and use an anti-aircraft missile, conspiracy to provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, conspiracy to assassinate US citizens, and conspiracy to assassinate US officers or employees . As part of Plan Colombia, the US military attacked a group of rebels in Colombia. None of the crimes were committed in the United States.
The Royal Thai Police arrested Bout in Bangkok, Thailand, on March 6, 2008, after the United States asked Interpol for a “red notice” about a plot to provide material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization.
After months of waiting, Bout’s extradition hearing began on September 22, 2008 at the Criminal Court in Bangkok. In February 2009, members of Congress sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton requesting that Bout’s extradition be “a top priority.”
On August 11, 2009, the Bangkok Criminal Court ruled in his favour. It said the case was political, not criminal, and rejected the United States’ request to extradite him. The United States tried to change that decision. A higher court in Thailand decided on August 20, 2010 that Bout could be sent to the US.
On November 16, 2010, Bout was sent from Thailand to the US despite protests from the Russian government, which believed it was against the law.
On December 8, 2022, Bout was sent back to Russia. Once it was clear that Whelan would not be included in the prisoner exchange, Biden said, “We have not yet given up on Paul’s release, and we will not.”
After returning to Russia
In an interview with Mary Butina for RT on December 9, 2022, Viktor Bout said that he did not think he was important for Russian politics. On December 10, Bout said he agreed with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and would join if he had the opportunity and skills.
On December 12, 2022, Leonid Slutsky, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, said that Bout had joined the party.
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Private life
He is married with Alla Vladimirovna Bolt since 1992. (born in 1970 in Leningrad). Alla is an artist, designer and fashion designer. She had clothing stores in the UAE, Germany, South Africa and Russia. In the late eighties, Viktor Bout met the woman who would become his wife in Mozambique.
At the time, he worked there as a translator from Portuguese for the military mission of the Soviet Union. This was Alla’s second time getting married. In 1994, his daughter was born in the UAE. Sergey Anatolyevich Bout, the older brother and former business partner, still runs an aviation company in the United Arab Emirates (Sharjah) and Bulgaria.
Viktor Bout is a vegetarian. He says he does not adhere to any religion, but he looks up to Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Ilyin as spiritual leaders and “shares the views” of Jesus Christ, Buddha, Zarathustra and Krishna.
Bout mastered several languages ​​while in prison, including English, French, Portuguese, Tajik, Farsi, Dari, Zulu, Xhosa, and Esperanto.
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