FOLLOWING THE TRAIL OF
THE "MERCHANT OF DEATH"
Did the FSB Betray Victor Bout?

by David Dastych, Warsaw, Poland
Thursday, March 20, 2008

In my first article, published on the Canada Free Press (CFP) website on March 14, 2008, and then reposted on political websites in Britain, Switzerland and in the United States, I reported about the DEA sting operation against Victor Bout and also on some events from the past, involving him and other people. A few hours only after the CFP publication, I received interesting documentation from Bucharest, Romania, which was published in part in my second article, posted on the CFP on Tuesday, March 18, 2008. A story recently printed in a Polish magazine Gazeta Polska [Polish Gazette] provided more facts about international links of Victor Bout’s criminal network, including his business with Polish Military Intelligence, and also with Russian and Polish gangsters Semyon Mogilevich and Riccardo Fanchini (Marian Kozina). According to the Polish TV reporter Witold Gadowski, one of the high-positioned protectors of Victor Bout in Putin’s Kremlin was Igor Ivanovich Sechin, known as an opponent of the new President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev.

HIGH CONNECTIONS, FSB AND THE MAFIA

On February 4, 2008, one of the most popular Polish TV documentary shows, "SuperWizjer" of the private TVN network, aired a sensational report entitled "The Russian Mafia, the Polish Government and Gas." The documentary, whose authors were two Polish investigative journalists, Przemyslaw Wojciechowski and Witold Gadowski, was the result of their team’s two-and-one-half-year work in many countries. The report stirred big waves in Poland, because it proved that the Polish Government was paying for the imports of Russian natural gas not directly to its producer, GAZPROM, but to an intermediary co-owned by the Russian mafia and "The Brainy Don," Semyon Mogilevich. One of the co-authors of that documentary, Gadowski, wrote a follow up story for a conservative Polish magazine Gazeta Polska. In the second part of his article, entitled "Gas Stinking of the Mafia: Traces of the Death Barons," Gadowski linked the recent arrest of Semyon Mogilevich in Russia to the arrest of Victor Bout in Thailand and to the election of the new President of Russia. The article is very interesting and I am going to quote from it several times throughout this piece.

"Officially, Bout fell into a trap arranged by American special services. But, in fact, he had been ‘pointed for a shot’ in Thailand by the FSB (the Russian Security Service). At the same time, FSB agents were hurriedly liquidating his base in Bulgaria." [From another source, AIA: "The old ties have come into the limelight this week for another reason: Russian arms trader Victor Bout, who supposedly had excellent contacts to the Soviet and later to the Russian secret service, had delivered a load of weapons worth several hundred million dollars to Bulgaria just before he was arrested on March 6."] "According to the official version, Bout, looked for in the whole world, fell into the hands of the Thai special services and was arrested with his accomplice, Andrew Smulian, when he tried to strike a deal to sell weapons to the Colombian FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia]. But there is also another, closer to the truth version of Major Bout’s giveaway. Somebody in the Kremlin has decided to wind up a protective umbrella over the most wanted international criminals. Mogilevich and Bout, used before in many actions, became useless ballast to the new ‘tsarevich’— Medvedev [Putin’s successor]."

Following the arrest of Victor Bout, Gadowski e-mailed several of his contacts, knowledgeable about Russian special services. One of the answers was symptomatic: "Igor Sechin, now one of the most important people of the top [Russian] leadership responsible for the management of the biggest state-owned oil company, Rosneft, which was built on the ruins of [Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s] Yukos, knows very much about Bout’s business. Sechin (a former KGB officer) was an interpreter of Portuguese language in Mozambique, where he met a fellow-interpreter, Victor Bout."

Under the rule of the former President Vladimir, Putin, Mogilevich and Bout were safe in Moscow. Now, when the President-elect Dmitry Medvedev is getting ready to do some "face-saving" in Russia, the old "kings" of the criminal underworld, serving the Kremlin as useful agents, are being dumped while new, still unknown replacements will take their place.

The Polish journalist quoted some opinions about Victor Bout:

Sergei P., a Russian businessman with a Western passport, a former AF pilot in Afghanistan stated, "[Bout] is a very brave fellow, he flies to the places that other guys would be scared to show up at, and he will always supply the cargo paid for."

Douglas Farah, an American journalist who had followed Bout and other gunrunners for years, was quoted as saying, "Of course, Bout, who has armed rebels, criminals and terrorists from the Taliban in Afghanistan to the RUF in Sierra Leone to the FARC in Colombia, has always operated under the protection of Russian military intelligence." ("Now The Fun Begins With Russia Over Bout Arrest,")

Farah made these comments on March 7, only a day after Bout’s arrest. An unnamed American investigative journalist e-mailed Gadowski, writing, "Dear Polish Colleague, don’t mind the names, these are only pawns on a chessboard. Somebody else will replace Bout, who has made dirty arms-trading deals for Putin’s men. But you better watch your steps, as they could find a nice psychiatric hospital for you."

BOUT’S POLISH TRAIL

Not much is known about Victor Bout’s connections in Poland. Gadowski only wrote in his article that after the arrest of Mogilevich and Bout "in some Polish homes panic buttons have been pressed, as both Mogilevich and Bout know the bank accounts, used by some Poles to collect money from suspicious transactions." Who are these people? I have no proof to name them, but there are many trails leading to some Polish businessmen and to former officers of the Polish Military Intelligence (WSI), who made fortunes on illegal trading in weapons, drugs and nuclear materials.

Bout’s air-services in Eastern Africa probably pushed out a Polish aviation business company, Joy Co. Ltd, from its base in Djibouti in the 1990s. The Russian cargo transports were offered much cheaper, and the Polish exporter lost its monopoly to sell or lease Soviet-made helicopters and planes to African governments. A clash of interests with Bout’s business dramatically ended for the Poles: top pilots and managers of Joy Co. Ltd. died in a strange helicopter crash on East African desert and the company withdrew from Djibouti.

In 1996, Victor Bout moved his business HQ to Ostend (Oostende) in Belgium. According to Gadowski, his planes "transported narcotics for the Nayfeld brothers. In Belgium he also met a Pole, Marian Kozina, a.k.a. Riccardo Fancini. Bout moved some secret cargo transports for him. According to one of my informants, some Polish WSI [Military Intelligence] officers, working on foreign outposts, were also involved in some of Bout’s operations."

At that time, the Russian-Jewish Nayfeld brothers, Boris and Benjamin, worked for an Italian mafia family, Lucese. A Polish mobster, Marian Kozina, using his father’s Sicilian name of Fanchini worked for both the Italian mafia and also the Russian "Red Mafia" of Semyon Mogilevich. Known as "The Polish Al Capone," Fanchini was one of the main "residents" of the Russian mafia in Europe. He was also suspected of being connected with killing General Marek Papala the chief of the Polish Police. In 2007 Riccardo Fanchini (Marian Kozina), a citizen of Belgium living in London, was arrested in Britain.

DUMPING THE "BARON OF DEATH"

In a conversation with Peter Landesman at a Moscow second class Renaissance Hotel (2003), Victor Bout and his Syrian-born American partner, Richard Chichakli, tried to discourage the journalist from pressing them too much about Bout's high connections: "They’ll put you on your knees before they execute you," Chichakli said. And Bout added, a bit later, "My clients, the governments. I keep my mouth shut. If I told you everything I’d get the red hole right here." He pointed to the middle of his forehead.

In a report, published in Belgium (2001), Victor Bout was presented as "the brain" of a large arms trafficking organization: "Another Ostend-based company, which until 1997 was involved in arms' smuggling, was NV Trans Aviation Network Group (hereafter "TAN Group".) The company was founded in 1995 and had its main office lodged in a totally new building at the end of the motorway from Brussels to Ostend. The parent company of TAN Group, AirCess is based in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, and seems to perform a pivotal function amongst different aircraft companies trafficking in arms. The brain of the organization is a Russian ex-KGB major, Victor Anatolevic Bout (previously referred to,) reported to be now resident in Sharjah and undoubtedly on excellent terms with Russian and Ukrainian mafia and with former KGB-colleagues. As already noted, Victor Bout bought himself a luxurious house in a residential quarter of Ostend. His Belgian partner was a pilot, Ronald Desmet, resident in France near the Swiss border."

After his true business had been exposed in the Belgian and international media, he had to leave Ostend and moved to Sharjah, but still in 1998 his illegal business via Ostend airport was not stopped: "Crossing borders with extreme ease, the arms traffickers have truly multinational networks and pipelines. The Ostend operators, for example, reside in Belgium, collect their cargo from eastern European suppliers and deliver to clients across the world. Bulgaria and Slovakia are major sources of arms to be transported to war zones. Airports from where the arms transfer is organized or effected are mainly Burgas and Plovdiv in Bulgaria, Bratislava in Slovakia, a number of Russian airports, Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates and the airport of Ostend. The arms are subsequently delivered to the Sudanese airport of Khartoum, to Sierra Leone, Angola, the Congo or other war zones. All the airports mentioned above are still visited by aircraft from Ostend."

Later on, Bout fled to Moscow because the FBI, the Interpol and many Western secret services were hunting him everywhere. Why would he allow himself take a great risk and go to Thailand to make a deal with the (alleged) Colombian FARC guerillas?

The answer could be found in a most recent report, published by Bruce Falconer on March 18, 2008, and entitled "Victor Bout’s Last Deal": "The decision to use the FARC to target Bout’s operation was not without precedent. In 2006, the same DEA unit nabbed Syrian arms dealer Monzer al-Kassar, the so-called ‘Prince of Marbella,’ at Madrid’s international airport after ensnaring him in a bogus multimillion-dollar deal to supply weapons and explosives to the FARC. Al-Kassar remains in a Spanish jail, awaiting extradition to the United States. The sting that put him there was almost identical to the one that would later snag Bout. How could the Russian, renowned for the care he took in ensuring his own security, have fallen for the same trick? In Bout’s case, another factor may have come into play, namely that the FARC really was trying to acquire the types of weapons and equipment he was known to provide."

But even if Bout had some good reasons to sell Bulgarian IGLA missiles and other weapons to the FARC, "immediately available" at his stores in Burgas and Plovdiv, why his Russian intelligence protectors (and business partners) did not avert him from a possible trap in Bangkok? The only logical answer is the following: his high Kremlin protectors wanted to "dump" him. And they really did that with the help of the American Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

[Also see http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/2301 ]