The inside story of how U.S. agents took down Viktor Bout, the world’s most notorious arms trader, and why they’re worried about what comes next.
and sending $25 billion worth of cocaine to the United States and other countries. Colombian National Police teams, often joined by agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Army special forces soldiers, regularly flew surveillance missions and mounted occasional lab raids — which is why the guerillas wanted anti-aircraft batteries.
As Zachariasiewicz confirmed when he and his partners quickly downloaded and checked the covert digital recordings, Bout had made a string of incriminating statements that violated specific sections of U.S. federal law. That meant he could be indicted in the Southern District of New York, which handled most federal terrorism cases.
But first, Bout had to be arrested. The Thai cops burst into the conference room door, followed by Zachariasiewicz and other DEA agents. Bout’s business partner, Andrew Smulian, was arrested as well, and the agents play-acted a fake arrest of Ricardo and Carlos. It probably didn’t fool Bout for long. The budding bromance with the Colombians was done.
Several are convinced he’ll soon reemerge as a player, helping Russia sell and acquire weapons in violation of international sanctions imposed in response to its invasion of Ukraine and earlier human rights violations. Zachariasiewicz says he’s worried about the signal the United States has sent by swapping him for Griner.
Zachariasiewicz initiated the DEA investigation of Bout in June 2007, based on information from the joint DEA-Colombian investigation that, a notorious gunrunner and cocaine transporter for the FARC, was negotiating with Bout for large quantities of heavy military-grade weapons, including surface-to-air missiles.
Zarate had been tracking Bout for some years. In 2004, when he was in charge of a U.S. Treasury unit that sanctioned bad actors, Zarate saw to it that Bout was blacklisted for supplying arms toa warlord whose rebel army in Liberia and Sierra Leone drugged and recruited children as soldiers, carried out atrocities and imprisoned women as sex slaves.
Zachariasiewicz smiled. He’d opened an investigation two months earlier. He was already on it, but somehow, the boss hadn’t heard yet.Zachariasiewicz was good as his word. He moved the investigation with astonishing speed. Deep in central Africa, he and his partners located a British bush pilot named Mike Snow, who had once worked for Bout and fallen out with him and was more than willing to help end his career. Snow led the agents to Bout partner, a shady South African down on his luck.
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