Arms Dealer: The Notorious Mr Bout Storyville

This programme contains some strong language

Everybody, hands up!

Hands up!

You are under arrest.

-TV:

-'Bout's involvement with arms dealing was

'the inspiration for the film Lord Of War starring Nicolas Cage.'

'Viktor Bout was ready to sell 20 million dollars worth of weapons.'

They call him the Merchant of Death.

'America's only bargaining chip over Edward Snowden.'

One of the most dangerous men on the face of the Earth.

-REPORTER:

-Do you have any regrets, Mr Bout?

This is my first visit to America.

On the drive to jail I saw the Brooklyn Bridge.

POLICE SIREN WAILS

I recognised it from the movies.

Today, in Manhattan Federal Court,

accused arm dealer Viktor Bout begins to face American justice.

The so-called Merchant of Death is now a federal inmate.

After more than two years of extradition proceedings,

a Thai court ordered Bout extradited to the United States for

his alleged agreement to supply an arsenal of military grade

weapons to men he believed,

one, represented the Colombian terrorist group

known as the FARC, and two, were bent on killing Americans.

REPORTER: What do you feel about the way ahead?

Do you think that he's likely to be acquitted or found guilty?

It's increasingly difficult to talk with any degree of clarity

about what Viktor Bout is or has done

without being seduced into one of two very simple narratives.

One, evil, all-powerful super-villain merchant of death

got his comeuppance.

And the other, stooge and victim of a conspiracy.

I think both of those very simplistic ideas do everybody

a tremendous disservice.

Because they allow us

to avoid confronting some very tough questions -

questions about how the arms trade actually works

and about who comes out on top

when all the sins of the industry are laid at the doorstep of one man.

I sit in solitary confinement. They call it special housing unit.

Every day I listen to the Puerto Rican radio station,

teach myself to salsa.

I have a lot of time for my thoughts.

I was born in the capital of Tajikistan, Dushanbe.

My mother was book-keeper, my father auto mechanic.

In school I played volleyball and chased after girls.

But my real hobby was Esperanto, the universal language.

I believed one day the world will all speak in one tongue.

COCOPHONY OF LANGUAGES

I did my service in the Soviet Army,

then study at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages.

I wanted to study French but they put me in Portuguese.

I was placed in intensive ten-months course.

In 1987, I leave Soviet Union for first time.

I was 20 years old on my way to Mozambique.

Viva!

Viva!

Viva!

Arriving in Africa was like seeing widescreen motion picture

in colour for first time -

bright sky, red soil, antelopes, crocodiles and zebras,

sunsets and sounds of village drums beating deep inside my core.

I was in Mozambique for a year when I meet Alla Protassova,

four years older than me and married to a journalist.

She was a fashion designer in St Petersburg.

TV: 'Good evening. The stunning overthrow of Mikhail Gorbachev

'by communist hardliners dominates the news this Monday.

'Gorbachev was reported under house arrest as Soviet tanks took

'up position throughout Moscow.'

-TV:

-'The central role of the Soviet Communist Party

'may at last be ending.'

HUBBUB

TV: 'There are scenes of extraordinary drama here

'in Moscow tonight.'

-TV:

-'Buses are being used as barricades to guard approaches

'to the square.'

-TV:

-'Four people died - shot or crushed by armoured vehicles.'

TV: 'This week has rocked the very foundations of Soviet power

'since Stalin's time.'

-TV:

-'Russian democrats now led by Boris Yeltsin

'have seized the initiative.'

TV: 'Gennady Yanayev, Vice President, under arrest.

'Vladimir Kryuchkov, head of the KGB, under arrest.'

-TV:

-'Tonight Moscow's skyline was ablaze with the sound

'and sights of celebration as Boris Yeltsin prepared to sign

'a decree suspending the Russian Communist Party.'

TV: 'It was the end of an extraordinary episode

'in Soviet history.

'Mr Yeltsin declared we've won, the coup has been defeated.'

-TV:

-'Russia he said has saved democracy, saved the world.'

We moved into a one-room apartment and began our life together,

just when the country was in ruin.

Every day, new adventure,

not knowing if you can get food or what will happen, only here and now.

So I quit the military and start to feel the atmosphere.

JAZZ MUSIC PLAYS

If you had brain, it wasn't hard to make money in Moscow doing business.

But all business in Moscow was dirty business.

You had to have protection, and then protection from your protection.

I said to Alla, "I don't need this, I am smart enough,

"I can make money wherever I go."

-TANNOY:

-'..travelling to Dusseldorf,

'immediate boarding, please, at gate D32.'

In 1993, I started a new firm with old friend Sasha Kibkalo.

We established a small company in Brussels -

one secretary and two guys at that office.

Our business plan pretty simple -

lease old Soviet cargo plane, sublease for three times as much.

Sasha makes deal with government of Angola - two years,

100 flight hours each month,

1,200 bucks an hour. Easy stuff.

We had a good thing in Belgium.

But it did not last long.

Company fell apart.

Same problem as always - people not knowing how to share.

I moved to Emirates, to the free trade zone.

Sharjah was the Hong Kong of Persian Gulf.

We lived like traders in ancient times. Buying, packing, shipping,

24 hours a day.

For Viktor, running his business out of Sharjah was actually

a masterstroke in a lot of ways,

I mean, there was this huge battle over cargo waiting to be moved.

It was the big bang, if you like, of what we know as globalisation.

It was a surge of cargo. 200 tonnes to Russia every day.

I remember persons who started with 300 US dollars,

and in six months were trading millions.

I asked my brother Sergei to help me with the business.

Say hello.

This man who was responsible for manufacturing of all that

material which was there.

This man who choose the material, and this man I don't know,

but it looks like he is also with this man.

MICHAEL BUERK: 'The leader of Angola's UNITA movement, Jonas Savimbi,

'has accused the MPLA Government of cheating in the country's

'first free elections and warned of a return to civil war.'

-TV:

-'Savimbi has spent 31 years fighting to rule his country.

'The danger is that he now urges his supporters to abandon

'the democratic system to return to the guns.'

I offered to Savimbi a training programme plus logistics support.

I sent Slava and some Moscow guys.

-TV:

-'For the past six weeks, UNITA has pounded the government forces.'

-TV:

-'The rebels have regrouped

'and now they're mounting a cruel guerrilla war.'

TV: 'Angolan forces are moving west to cut of the rebels' supply lines

'in the north.'

I always think of business as flowing river.

You need to have more than 1,000 projects under consideration -

maybe one of them is productive, and maybe makes money.

For Viktor, Africa was sort of a happy hunting ground.

There was so much to be done, not just in terms of destabilising

commodities and in terms of arms, but the food for all

of our supermarkets - tilapia fish, flowers, chickens.

There were lots and lots of reasons

for all these planes to be out there, legitimate reasons.

I was always excited to study new technologies and see

what can be used, especially in Africa where everything is needed.

Viktor and I met on the airfield in Kisangani in the Congo, 1996,

'97, I forget the exact date.

I'd been doing some work for an airline,

which was delivering aid for the Red Cross,

and it so happened we were the only two white men in town that night.

So, we were staying in the same half-decent hotel.

And we had a couple of beers together.

I should explain the local beer in the Congo is called Primus.

And it comes in one litre bottles.

So, you know, you only buy a couple of bottles in an evening and you are

fairly well accommodated.

We talked about politics, we talked about climate change,

and I find him quite a good conversationalist.

I didn't know anything about him at that time.

He was someone who was involved in the air freight business,

I was aware he was quite good at it.

He was running quite a large freight of Russian transport aircrafts

from West Africa and from Liberia, across into the Congo,

including, on some occasions, carrying guns.

What's the altitude now?

Altitude? 28,000 feet, my friend...

-OK, very good.

-..above the sea level.

Peter Mirchev, you could say, was Viktor's wholesaler,

the arms dealer with whom Viktor worked.

He is a Bulgarian, based in Burge and Sharjah.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union,

the Bulgarians were desperate to sell arms because you can't suddenly

go overnight from making Kalashnikov weapons to making washing machines.

There is a valley in Bulgaria where all the perfume comes from.

It also has two very big gun factories.

The most beautiful sight I ever saw was the blood red poppies

blooming in the spring.

It was in Afghanistan that things took a wrong turn.

August 3rd, 1995, I get a phone call.

One of my planes transporting 30 tonnes of ammunition was

intercepted by Taliban forces.

I meet with Mullah Omar,

leader of Taliban, to negotiate the release of pilots.

But fucking Taliban hate me because I flied for government in Taliban.

-TV:

-'As winter settles in, defence minister Ahmad Shah Massoud

'prepares government forces for a final stunt.'

IN ARABIC:

THEY ROAR

My pilots were held hostage for more than a year.

Then Massoud helped organise an escape plan.

During Friday prayers, my men make the move.

After the boys come home, my company was stronger than ever.

By 25, I was a millionaire. My business growing every year.

By 30, I had an empire.

The confidential sources had two recorders on them to ensure

that if one failed, that we would still have one good recorder.

The operation to catch Mr Bout was called Operation Relentless.

I was one of the two lead agents on the case along with Wim Brown.

We tried to find an individual that could lead us

to Viktor Bout that operated with Bout in the past.

And that penetration point to us was Andrew Smulian.

He was an older gentleman

that had managed one of Bout's companies in South Africa...

and he was not always a very successful guy in his endeavours,

was down on his luck,

and we believed that Andrew would be a willing partner in this scenario.

Mr Smulian, in approximately what year

did you first meet the defendant?

1997.

He was looking for a base from which to operate in South Africa.

Where in South Africa did you set up the defendant's business?

In a town called Pietersburg, just north of Johannesburg.

MUSIC: Ain't That A Kick In The Head by Dean Martin

APPLAUSE

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

'I had projects in Mauritania,

'diamond concession in Central African Republic,

'charter business in Europe,

'but I decided to make South Africa my home -

'lots of opportunity there,

'transporting wild animals to zoos and private collectors.

'But big problem - their business runs the plane.

'So my guys would engineer cargo hold

'and within three months we take over the cargo market.'

The next day, they attacked the office.

My name is Albert Dayan. I'm the lead counsel for Viktor Bout.

Thank you all for coming. I just want to let you know

that today we have selected the jury that will preside over his trial.

'I must have been like the 30th lawyer

'that Viktor had seen prior to his selection.'

He had seen lawyers that would tell him,

"Look, Viktor, you got to go in and co-operate

"in order for you to come out of a federal case."

He is, at this point, detained in downtown Manhattan

in solitary confinement.

I believe that he believed

that I believed that he was innocent.

The DEA agents, they knew that Viktor Bout

had two airplanes in the Congo that he wanted to sell.

So they get Viktor into a meeting

and entrap him into saying certain things.

There's a lot of people

that aren't particularly fond of sting operations,

if you want to call it that. Some people call it entrapment.

But I don't see this being entrapment in really any sense.

Entrapment is tempting someone to engage in an illicit activity

that they have absolutely no experience in,

and that certainly wasn't the case here.

The arms trade was Viktor's trade.

He had been a professional in that field for a long time.

He was offered an opportunity and he had every ability to say no to it.

'Carlos and Ricardo worked for us.'

We sat down there in advance,

went over the scripts, on how we wanted this to play out.

At any point, Viktor could have stepped out of this scenario

and said, "I'm not in it. I just want to sell planes."

If you're in a meeting

and someone starts talking about killing Americans,

the first place that I'd be going is the door.

What kind of man is he? Is he a man who could deal arms?

HE TRANSLATES INTO RUSSIAN

BIRDSONG

TV: 'It's been a long and brutal war in the Congo.

'In the last year,

'the conflict has been at its worst in the region around Bunia,

'sparking fears of a Rwanda-style genocide.

-TV:

-'Following the assassination of President Laurent Kabila,

'former businessman Jean-Pierre Bemba

'rallies support in local elections

'for his Uganda-backed MLC party.'

Congo is the biggest untapped trunk of natural resources in all Africa.

That's why wars there will be endless.

Here he is, Viktor Bout...

..Bemba's man in Congo.

The first time I saw Viktor...

..I heard his first name and then he gave me his card, business card -

"Viktor Bout from Central African Airways, based in Kigali, Rwanda".

Viktor, he loved to be in the fields.

He could have gone to a hotel,

but he preferred to stay in a little tent on the airport.

Usually in the morning, he took a little while

for making satellite phone calls.

And then, when that was finished, he put away his phone

and he was a tourist

in one of the most turbulent areas of the world, East Congo.

Viktor was filming the whole experience here

of Bemba visiting the town of Aru.

This was supposed to be

the first real elections after Mobutu left the country.

And here he was, establishing his party in the area

by visiting all these small towns, talking about how he would bring

electricity and medicines to the people.

He had all these fantastic proposals.

But there were stories about what his troops did with prisoners of war,

rape and looting and even cannibalism,

and that's the stories that finally ended him up

in the prison of the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

Un, deux, trois.

CHILDREN SING:

In this place, a few weeks after we left there,

some horrible killings were done.

SINGING CONTINUES

Viktor saw Bemba as a future.

He was talking about what he might do

in an area controlled by Bemba that was peaceful,

creating satellite communication businesses, agricultural businesses,

creating free-trade zones.

That was also one of his ideas.

When we met,

the first UN report in which Viktor Bout was actually mentioned

as one of the main sanction busters

had already been published.

And he said that everything that was told about him was rubbish.

He said, "I'm not an arms trader.

"It's possible that I've transported arms,

"but I am a businessman, and I have lots of planes,

"and I don't care what I transport,

"because that's not my responsibility."

But every war I mentioned, he had been there,

been in Somalia, in Sudan, in Uganda, in Rwanda, in Burundi.

But he denied that he was fuelling wars,

he was just trying to see situations where he could make money.

My friend the photographer and I,

we knew that it was not going to be easy to take a picture of him,

because he had one of his bodyguards.

He had sort of a big Rambo kind of knife,

and when he saw at some point that we were actually aiming at Viktor,

he took the knife out and he made sort of this cutting throat movement.

Wim was a very good photographer,

so he used a wide-angle lens and he was aiming at the soldiers

but actually was just having Viktor in the picture,

so I think he managed to make five shots.

And these were the first pictures of Viktor taken in the field ever...

..so they had a wide circulation. It went on the internet.

The end was near - that was clear, the moment the pictures were taken.

AFRICAN MUSIC PLAYS ON RADIO

RHYTHMIC SHOUTING

'By 2000, I had a lot of government contracts in Africa.

'When Kagame became president of Rwanda,

'he hired my guys to train his troops.

'The cargo business was too easy for me.

'I made money, but it was just means to an end.

'I wanted to travel, see world, make documentary film.'

The last time I saw Viktor was in the Sheraton in Kampala,

and he was there trying to get money off President Museveni.

He reckoned the Ugandan government owed him eight million bucks

for transportation costs.

I think that the first time Viktor Bout was on my radar

was in the late '90s,

and it was just seeing this name cropping up again and again.

Viktor Bout is indeed the chief sanctions buster at the present time,

a real merchant of death.

-TV:

-'He's known as the world's most efficient postman,

'delivering almost any cargo anywhere in the world,

'especially if it's illicit weapons.

'The notorious business of arms trafficking

'has netted Viktor Bout hundreds of millions of dollars,

'but he remains something of a mystery man.

'Joining me now is Douglas Farah,

'the co-author of The Merchant of Death:

'Money, Guns, Planes And The Man Who Makes War Possible.

'I've got to start off by asking you, who is this man?

'How did he get so entrenched in so many different places at once?

'Look, you never shoot the postman, and as you said earlier,

'his mantra was to deliver the packages wherever they needed to go

'and deliver them on time.

'He switches his company's registrations,

'he wires his money to different groups around the world,

'he hides his tracks incredibly well.'

Viktor's arms trafficking

was less than 5% of his total uplift of cargo.

Viktor Bout is not a merchant of death,

he is a merchant of some death,

because on occasion his aircraft willingly carried guns

for people who used them to commit human rights abuses.

One of the problems with the illegal arms trade

is that most of it is actually probably not terribly illegal.

Governments are actually quite loath to make international laws tougher,

because it stops us supporting our friends.

There's no law anywhere which says you can't carry guns.

When you want to make money by carrying cargo,

how many questions do you want to ask?

As long as it's legal or appears to be legal,

what else do you need to worry about?

We had an earlier eyewitness that told us

he thought it appeared to be a 737.

SIRENS WAIL

SCREAMING

TV: 'Good evening and welcome.

'Disaster has struck the United States,

'with New York and Washington

'reeling under a series of terrorist attacks.

-TV:

-'Tonight, we are a country awakened to danger

'and called to defend freedom.

'Our grief has turned to anger...

'and anger to resolution.

'Whether we bring our enemies to justice...

'or bring justice to our enemies...

'justice will be done.'

APPLAUSE

2001 was the point

at which everybody started watching what was coming and going.

Suddenly all eyes were on whatever was on every aeroplane in the world.

You know, it all had to be checked.

For Viktor, obviously this was very bad, because that meant

that not only was there a lot of scrutiny

suddenly coming on businesses like his,

but Viktor had been doing business

with some of the very people that were suddenly under the spotlight.

The work visas were not renewed. We became personae non grata.

TV: 'Bout was accused of fuelling conflicts...'

-TV:

-'..operating a fleet of 50 aircraft...'

The other important thing to remember is that post 9/11,

the standard of evidence you needed

to call somebody a terrorist or in partnership with terrorism

almost disappeared.

And so people start floating ideas around it,

and I think, in some instances,

the US intelligence was mentioning things to journalists as rumours.

The journalists would then write them.

US intelligence would then quote those articles as substantiated fact

and then begin to leak them and to sort of publicise them

as "this proves it" and it's part of a dossier.

It was all a bit of an echo chamber.

I think that Viktor was naive to think he would clear his name...

because, let's face it,

it's quite nice to have the Russians as the villains.

We're used to it, it's part of our comfort zone.

And it's interesting that the Russian slang word for a gangster

is "biznizman", B-I-Z-N-I-Z-M-A-N.

Many ordinary Russians are quite unable to understand the difference

between a businessman and a crook.

I think that he...

did not have sufficient moral fibre to necessarily realise

when he was overstepping the mark and doing things that were wrong -

morally wrong, as distinct from legally wrong.

I think when you look back at the history

of the American authorities' relationship with Viktor Bout,

there's this sort of, "Shall we?" "Oh, no, let's not bother."

"Shall we?" "Oh, let's..."

"Who's this?" "Oh, he's always doing some naughty things."

"Is it our problem?" "Not really." And you get this kind of...

It's not even a cat and mouse game, it's a "can we be bothered?" game.

And eventually, I think the tipping point

was the point at which he started to become so prominent

and to love the limelight so much.

And this was the point at which he did

the New York Times article and photo shoot.

So, we sell by the kilo.

They're second-hand weapons, but they're still OK.

Is it true that there was a Hollywood film based on your story?

I feel very sorry for Nicolas Cage, who went to play this role.

It's very silly, and I feel pity for... It's bad movie.

And he certainly isn't the huge villain he's painted.

He's a fool rather than a villain.

-SINGING:

-In a way, it was nice to go back to Moscow,

not have three mobile phones ringing day and night.

I tried to explore new businesses.

I manufactured kitchen tile,

imported reindeer meat to Moscow restaurants, grow organic arugula.

Most new projects don't make money.

I go broke.

UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS

PHONE RINGS

In 2007, we made contact with Andrew Smulian.

In January of 2008,

Smulian goes to Moscow to make contact with Viktor Bout.

Viktor trusted Smulian. I mean, that's the most basic understanding

of what their relationship was.

Within a very short period of time,

Smulian left Moscow after discussing the specifics

of this proposal by the FARC undercover operatives.

Bout said that he could meet in Thailand,

and at this point it was game time.

PHONE RINGS

Hello?

OK, look, my side we now fully ready.

-Yeah.

-But we only meet, we don't do anything there.

-OK. I'll talk to them in the morning, first thing.

-OK.

One of the tragic points about Viktor Bout

is that he's clearly a very intelligent man

and clearly had a lot of success early on,

and I think in some ways that was his downfall.

If he had known failure earlier in life,

he wouldn't have grown up convinced of his own perfect judgment...

..and he wouldn't have been so naive

to walk into this room against everybody's advice,

or against all the clues,

against the kind of hamminess of the actors wearing the wire,

against all the hints that they were giving.

He wouldn't have blindly carried on,

thinking, "I'm going to make the deal."

-Everybody, hands up!

-Hands up!

Following Mr Bout's arrest,

the Thais provided us an opportunity to talk to him,

and I said, "Look, Mr Bout, I think it's only fair if I explain to you

"that those two gentlemen that you were just negotiating with

"back in the hotel for an hour or so

"were actually DEA undercovers.

"The entire meeting was recorded, and it came out crystal clear."

And he looked down, put his head down for a minute,

very quiet and reserved, and then just looked up and said,

"Well, I guess you're holding all the cards, then, aren't you?"

'After the arrest, DEA come and talk to me,

'they say agree to extradition,

'and if I don't go to New York I would rot in Thai jail.'

There was a political desire

to make somebody pay for the illegal arms trade.

He was a convenient scapegoat.

He's not the only Russian businessman

whose aircraft have flown weapons.

I'm certainly aware of also American businessmen that did the same thing.

The tragedy is that there's been a huge waste of time and resources

which has put somebody away in prison for God knows how long

and has done absolutely nothing to try and curb

the excesses of the illegal arms trade.

So, after the bust, Smulian was offered a plea deal,

and he agreed to testify against Viktor Bout.

And this was the beginning

of a kind of horse trading and politicking between the US and Russia

to try and get him back onto their soil.

-TV:

-'US prosecutors want to extradite him to stand trial,

'but today a Thai judge rejected their request,

'saying this was a political case

'and that Thailand does not recognise FARC

'as a terrorist group.'

Viktor, your reaction?

At one point, Thai authorities decided

they had to send him back to Russia, and then there was an appeal,

and then they said, "Oh, all right,

"we'll overturn that. We'll extradite him."

And then the States had a plane waiting on the runway for him

and, from that point, there was no escape.

'I was shocked to see how international politics played out -

'greed, treason, betrayal,

'but then my shock disappeared...

'..and I was able to learn quickly how these things really work.

'Not a lot has changed since ancient time.'

PHONE RINGS

Alo?

Privyet!

PHONE BEEPS

-TV:

-'Viktor Bout faces life imprisonment

'for trying to sell arms to what he believed were Colombian militants.'

Is your daughter coming today? Is your daughter supposed to come?

-Yes.

-She's going to be here?

-Yes. She's opposite side of here.

Opposite side, I understand. Have you prepared her for this?

-It's difficult for me.

-Yes. You speak well. We've spoken.

No, maybe I... Something I not understand.

But how are you feeling about the whole thing?

I mean, you've got to be feeling...

Do you feel like your husband feels confident?

-He feels strong.

-Yeah.

-That's all.

Viktor Bout showed little emotion

as the jury's unanimous guilty verdict was read out.

Mr Bout, do you wish to say anything to the court

before sentence is imposed?

I'm innocent. I don't commit any crime.

There is no crime to sit and talk.

If you're going to apply the same standards to me,

then you're going to, you know, jail all those arms dealers in America

who are selling their arms and then they kill Americans.

At the trial, during sentencing,

the judge asked Viktor if he had anything to say,

and for the first time he got up,

somewhat composed in the beginning, but it quickly turned into...a rant.

Even in Asia they start to say, "Oh, we saw the movie about you.

"It was so exciting. Let us take pictures."

I am for them like a trophy, like a hunted deer whom they killed.

I was taken back by what he said.

I mean, how can he not see what he's done in the past is wrong?

I think the real Viktor came out at that moment.

There was a lot of anger. He wasn't happy about it.

He wasn't happy that he couldn't be Viktor Bout any more,

and he let his true colours show.

It's a double standard. It's a hypocrisy. I want to go home.

I don't commit any crime. I'm innocent.

Thank you, Mr Bout. Now, I have a lot to say.

I begin with the nature and circumstances of the offence.

Until the DEA went after Bout,

he had not committed a crime chargeable in an American court

in all his years as an arms dealer,

and but for the approach

made through this determined sting operation,

there is no reason to believe

that Bout would ever have committed the charged crimes.

Based on review of the statutory factors, I intend to impose

a required mandatory jail term of 25 years in custody.

The notoriety, the myth of Viktor Bout

propelled the jurors to look for a reason to convict him...

and not for a reason to acquit him,

and that's the unfortunate thing in this case.

What do you think about this sentence, 25 years the minimum?

Erin, I'm both shocked and disappointed.

There are these intermediaries

where it just seems like they're evading justice,

and they are the ones we should be going after.

And like again we saw today with the Viktor Bout trial,

they just keep getting off lightly.

REPORTERS SHOUT QUESTIONS

HE WHISTLES A TUNE