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Viktor Bout
February 23, 2006
The UAE and Viktor Bout
More:One way to determine how a person or en y will act in the future is to see how they have acted in the past. As the debate over the UAE ownership of ports heats up, it is worth looking at how the leaders there have handled another important security issue related to radical Islamic terrorism—Viktor Bout. The response is deeply troubling.
Viktor Bout, the world’s largest illegal weapons dealer, made $50 million selling weapons to the Taliban, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. He continues to feed murder and mayhem across Africa by selling weapons to rogue regimes and nonstate actors. And he continues to maintain several dozen aircraft, registered to different and constantly changing companies, IN THE UAE—one of only three countries in the world to recognize the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Bout and 30 of his companies are designated by the U.S. Treasury Department and the United Nations Sanctions, meaning every country is bound to freeze the assets of those companies and individuals. Yet the UAE has made no move to go after Bout’s aircraft, even though one of his designated companies, IRBIS, continues to fly openly, and has not even bothered to change its name. His aircraft sit on the runways of Sharjah, and his pilots continue to fly daily from there, including recent flights for the U.S. military and its contractors.
The United States, for the past EIGHT YEARS has been asking the UAE to crack down on Bout’s illicit activities there, with no results. The latest high-level U.S. delegation was in UAE last week, asking the rulers to please shut down IRBIS, as required by UN charter. The answer was that the rulers would continue to study the issue.
Not a very au ious way of handling a know aider and abettor of terrorist organizations, one with an outstanding Interpol red notice and one designated by the United Nations. It does not build confidence in the ability of UAE rulers to handle future problems.
One of the reasons is that Bout has a partnership with a member of the UAE’s ruling family, a prince who ran an airline with him and has reportedly helped insure that Bout’s operations are untouchable. If it happens with Bout, one can only imagine other terrorists with business or family connections receiving the same kind of protection, perhaps with deadlier results.
Blacklisted Russian's planes tied to U.S. contracts in Iraq
Stephen Braun, Judy Pasternak, T. Christian Miller, Los Angeles Times
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
WashingtonSan Francisco Gate-- Air cargo companies allegedly tied to a reputed Russian arms trafficker have received millions of dollars in federal funds from U.S. contractors in Iraq, even though the Bush administration has worked for three years to rein in his enterprises.
Planes linked to Victor Bout's shadowy network continued to fly into Iraq, according to government records and interviews with officials, even though the Treasury Department froze his assets in July and placed him on a blacklist for allegedly violating international arms sanctions.
Largely under the au es of the Pentagon, U.S. agencies including the Army Corps of Engineers and the Air Force, and the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, which governed Iraq until last summer, have allowed their private contractors to do business with the Bout network.
Four firms linked to the network by the CIA and international investigators have flown into Iraq more than 195 times on U.S. business, government flight and fuel do ents show. One such flight landed in Baghdad last week.
The list of the Bout network's suspected clients over the years includes the Taliban, which bought airplanes for a secret airlift of arms to Afghanistan. The Taliban is known to have shared weapons with al Qaeda.
Still more:
Bout: Dealing with the U.S.?
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek
If K&R are involved, you can pretty much bet that Bout wasn't just shipping in illegal weapons into Iraq and Afghanistan for the Taliban.Dec. 20 issue - In an effort to crack down on one of the world's most notorious international criminals, President George W. Bush last summer signed an order barring U.S. citizens from doing business with Russian arms trafficker Victor Bout. But not long afterward, U.S. officials discovered Bout's tentacles were wider than anticipated: for much of this year, NEWSWEEK has learned, a Texas charter firm allegedly controlled by Bout was making repeated flights to Iraq—courtesy of a Pentagon contract allowing it to refuel at U.S. military bases. One reason for the flights, sources say, was that the firm was flying on behalf of Kellogg Brown & Root, the division of Halliburton hired to rebuild Iraq's oilfields.
U.S. officials say Bout—once dubbed a "merchant of death" by a British foreign minister—built an empire in the 1990s flying weapons to the Taliban and African dictators and rebel groups, in violation of international sanctions. Bush's order banning business with Bout, a former Soviet military officer, was for supplying guns to the rogue regime of ex-Liberian president Charles Taylor. "Our ultimate goal is to shut down his network," says Juan Zarate, assistant Treasury secretary.
But U.S. officials feared they were being undermined recently when they got evidence that Bout's aircraft were spotted in Iraq. A Pentagon official confirmed that, until last summer, a Texas carrier named Air Bas had a "fuel purchase agreement" authorizing its planes to refuel at U.S. bases there. Air Bas planes landed 142 times at U.S. bases this year, says Jack Hooper of the Defense Logistics Agency. The flights began months after a U.N. report identified Air Bas as a suspected Bout "front company." Sources say Treasury officials recently recommended naming Air Bas to a list of Bout-connected firms to be covered by Bush's order. (Air Bas president Richard Chichakli acknowledges he was in contact with Bout, but says Bout is not an owner of the firm.)
Hooper says his agency had been unaware of the Bout connection and cut off the agreement in August after the firm "repeatedly" rebuffed requests to identify what business it was conducting for the U.S. government. Chichakli says Air Bas had subcontracted with another firm, Falcon Express in Dubai, that was hired to haul cargo for two big Iraq contractors—FedEx and Kellogg Brown & Root. "I'm like Hertz or Avis," he says. "You rent my planes, you go from point A and point B." A FedEx spokeswoman says the firm recently told Falcon to drop Air Bas when it learned of the alleged Bout link. Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall says the firm had "no knowledge" of Air Bas's role, but that the firm stopped using Falcon Express "six months ago." Still, Lee Wolosky, a former National Security Council official who tracked Bout, says it's "seemingly inexplicable" that the U.S. government could have been "doing business with an international criminal organization."
