Sofitel Bangkok, Thailand, March 6, 2008.
A group of Americans hid in the guest room, nervously staring at images from pinhole cameras, not peeking into the privacy of others, but about to arrest internationally wanted criminals who had not had a chance to approach in 7 years.
Seven years ago, this man angered a big man in Washington, and just as the CIA was about to target him, he fled to Russia and received political asylum from Putin himself, and the arrest had to be shelved.
Who, on the other hand, caused the Americans to go to Great Lengths to run to Thailand to arrest people? What background does he have to get Putin's asylum? Some say he was a Soviet spy and others say he was a terrorist, but the operatives present, including their superiors, knew little about the true identity of the target.
The man's name is Victor Anatolyevich Boot, a name you've probably never heard of, but you've seen the movie "The Lord of War" starring Nicolas Cage, and the male protagonist Yuri Orov is based on him.
Gifted with language, a keen sense of business smell, and a sense of ease in various social circles, this is not the fictional character attributes of the screenwriter, but the real characteristics of Boot himself, and his story is more amazing than the plot of the movie.
▲ Poster of the movie "King of War"
01, Soviet phoenix man
Born in 1967 in Dushanbe, the capital of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Tajikistan, Boot showed extraordinary linguistic talent from an early age, learning Esperanto invented by Lazarus Chaimenhof through the Esperanto Club at the age of 12, and enlisting in the army at the age of 18 and then applying for an offer from the Department of Western Languages of the Moscow Military Foreign Languages Institute at the army, majoring in Portuguese.
▲ Boot when he was at a military school
The academy began to train military and political cadres proficient in foreign languages in 1940, and in the 1970s it added courses such as politics, law, humanities, finance, military music, and informatics, and slowly developed into the military academy of the Russian Ministry of Defense today.
However, in the eyes of the Western intelligence community, the school is ostensibly a comprehensive university for training civilian cadres, but inside it is a secret unit for selecting and training agents, and the trainees who go out from here will enter the intelligence and foreign agencies to work and carry out espionage activities abroad.
In 1987, after graduating from the school, Bout was assigned to the Soviet Military Advisory Group in Mozambique as an interpreter and liaison officer.
▲ Photo taken by Boot when he was 20 years old
If he didn't grow a beard, he would be a little younger
In addition to being particularly sensitive to language, Boot was a natural acquaintance with social promiscuity attributes, and soon established a very good personal relationship with the local military attaché, and studied African culture and politics in his spare time.
According to Boot, in addition to being proficient in Russian, English and Portuguese, he also speaks 16 African languages, 10 of which can communicate with the locals without barrier-free communication, and can translate documents and archives written in 5-6 of them without the help of reference books and dictionaries. Solid language skills not only make him comfortable in his daily work, but also play a very key role in accumulating a broad network in the future.
▲ Bout and Mozambican children
In addition to working as an interpreter, Bout had another task during his time in Mozambique, which was to coordinate arms sales.
In order to confront the United States, the Soviet Union actively expanded its influence in Africa, selling a large number of monkey arms to local chiefs and warlords, although the Soviet Union's national strength had begun to decline in the 1980s, and it was during this period that Bout used his working connections to contact the arms sales network.
▲ In 1991, Boot returned to China to get married
At this time, there were only three months left before the collapse of the Soviet Union
Unfortunately, the good times did not last long, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the advisory group was disbanded on the spot after it was withdrawn to China, and Boot could only be demobilized. At that time, many soldiers were unemployed, and even Putin, who came from a school bully and a KGB background, almost went to work as a taxi driver in the wave of layoffs, but the flexible Boute found a new way to make a fortune with his language skills and interpersonal relationships.
02、 "King of War"
If the fat soldier had such a talent, then we would want to go to the United Nations and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a counselor, but a strange person like Boot is more brave to take risks.
During his five years in Office in Mozambique, the perpetual conflict and war in Africa taught Bout a truth: On a continent without law and order, where a soldier has a gun and a fist, he can gain power by force.
When you use an incomparably large arsenal to satisfy a world of violent worship, two things arise, one is a tyrannical warlord like a slave owner, the other is an amazing wealth, and Boot is the kind of person who can bring the two together.
The protagonist of "The Lord of War," Yuri Orof, began his career in the arms business by selling Uzi submachine guns to gangsters, while Boot had his eye on the large number of AK-47s in Soviet stocks from the start, and he knew who could get the mountains of rifles out and where to sell them.
As shown in the film, the once-mighty Red Army fell into chaos in the early days of disintegration, full of people who "dug up the remaining corners of socialism", because some units could no longer pay wages, and the sale of public administrative and even military assets became an important means for them to live.
In the First Chechen War, chechens could not even believe that captured Russian officers were so poor that they had only one uniform and an old-fashioned Vostok military watch, a situation that could not be opened until around 2000.
So when Boot threw an olive branch to these poor soldiers, especially those who were in positions with positions in sensitive positions, he was able to persuade them to join the company very smoothly, after all, no one could not get along with money, especially when the country he defended had been destroyed by a handful of big people who were high up in the air.
Solving the supply, the rest is shipping and buyers.
In order to establish a pretext for smuggling, Boot moved to Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, in the city he called an extralegal place, he used bribery and other means to win over various people working at the airport and customs to open up large and small joints, and in 1993 registered a shipping company called Air Cess and put together a small Russian fleet.
▲ Butt started by transporting AK-47s from an Il-76 to Angola
As for the African customer, he has long been in contact with the old personal relationship and the crazy sales physique, as soon as the plane lands, someone will come to pick up the goods, and there is no need to worry about someone to check, because there is no airport at all in the place where they connect, and the transaction can be completed on the dirt road.
Bout's "business" soon spread to Sierra Leone, Angola, Rwanda, Liberia and Congo, warlords, rebels, dictators in the name of president are his loyal customers, who would refuse to get the original Soviet AK-47 and RPG from thousands of kilometers away?
In 1994, Bout began selling arms to the Congo
Compared with the excellent translator, Fat Bing thought he was a pure arms dealer, because he didn't care where the weapons would be used, it didn't matter whether he was liberated independently or slaughtered civilians, as long as he paid for it, he was his business partner.
In just a few years, Boot's personal fortunes had amassed millions of dollars, his fleet had grown to 300 people, he had at least three private jets to carry goods, and he never forgot to use money and luxury to maintain his network.
▲ Boot's group photo with his company colleagues looks like an ordinary businessman
03, black eat black
In 1995, Bout began supplying weapons to the Afghan government, but this time he encountered something more troublesome than Interpol — his goods were hijacked by the Taliban.
Earlier that year, a transport plane loaded with 3 million rounds of AK bullets was intercepted and intercepted by Taliban MiG fighters and forced to land in a place in the mountains of Afghanistan where birds did not lay eggs, the crew was captured, and the bullets were plundered.
But the real purpose of the Taliban was not to swallow the goods so simply, but to lure him out on the grounds of demanding a ransom and let him supply weapons for the Taliban, but this trick really worked, but Bout personally flew to Afghanistan, and also met the founder of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, and the two sides hit it off.
▲ The film adapts the story of the interception of the plane
The C.I.A. found in a later investigation that he had made at least $50 million from the Taliban, and the United States once suspected that the Taliban's power had expanded rapidly in 1995 because of the large number of weapons supplied by Boot at work.
At first, no one paid attention to what was happening in Afghanistan, until 9/11 in 2001, when the United States was furious and the intelligence services began to track down those who helped terrorists, and Boot was one of the first targets to be targeted.
▲ At the peak of his career, this arms dealer who crossed the African continent had been completely blessed
However, the US intelligence officers who pursued the case never expected that Boot also had contacts with the Pentagon, some senior officials borrowed his hand to supply weapons to various color fronts supported by the United States, and he made more money from the US government than from the Taliban, and the benefits of superpowers and terrorists were eaten at both ends!
In fact, the US National Security Agency and the White House Cabinet have long known about the work of the two gangs, but they just don't want to carry the pot so they pretend not to see it, which makes the CIA very angry, and checks with my stupid hat for half a day, and in the end it is to find steps for the officials to wipe their butts.
But no matter what, people still have to be caught. The following year, Interpol issued a Red Notice against Bout for money laundering and arms smuggling, but the old fox immediately after 9/11 went into hiding in Russia and received political asylum personally approved by Putin.
4. Lead the snake out of the hole
For the United States, Boot has become a heart disease, although it is necessary to arrest people and shame, they do not dare to do it in Russia, and the only feasible way is to lure him out.
In 2008, the U.S. Federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) orchestrated a scam in which operatives posing as members of the Revolutionary Army of Colombia (FARC) invited Boot to Bangkok, Thailand, to talk about arms business.
After years of business and itchy hands, Boot could not resist the temptation of the dollar and went to Thailand for an appointment without permission, only to be caught by the Thai police and DEA who had already been deployed there at the hotel.
In 2008, Boot was arrested in Bangkok
Two years later, Bout was extradited to the United States, and the Supreme Court sentenced Bout to 25 years in prison for conspiring to kill American nationals, conspiring to kill U.S. officials, stealing and using anti-aircraft missiles, and conspiring to provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations.
▲ People die for money, but Boute planted his head because of greed
It is not difficult to see from these charges that the Americans are taking a personal vendetta, venting their anger, and using his verdict to cover up their failures, three of the four crimes are false, and the presiding judge Streelin also said that there is no evidence that he was directly involved in terrorist activities, he is just an arms dealer, just like other arms dealers.
As for Bout, he appeared calm after going to prison and never regretted what he had done, but only hoped that Russia would treat the Americans in this way.
epilogue
Bout's true identity is still not fully revealed to this day, the CIA insists that he is a spy in the Soviet General Staff Intelligence Department (now GRU), and the author of "The Merchant of Death", former CIA officer Douglas Farah, believes that he has multiple identities, we don't even know whether Victor Bout is his real name, if he had not been involved in the Taliban's muddy waters, Butt's arms business is likely to continue to this day.
▲ In 2010, Bout was extradited back to the United States by the time he had lost a lot of weight
In recent years, Russia has been trying to get Boot back to Russia with a prisoner exchange agreement, but Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Penkin has revealed that Washington is not interested in this and believes that the prisoner exchange is "not constructive." ”
Will Bout, 54, now in prison in Marion, Illinois, make him back to Russia alive? I'm afraid no one knows.