Notorious ‘Merchant Of Death’ Held in Bangkok
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
BANGKOK, Thailand — The world’s most notorious arms dealer was arrested in Thailand yesterday, after fuelling many of the most deadly recent conflicts and running rings around investigators for nearly two decades.
He is variously known as Vadim Aminov, Victor Balukin, Victor Butt, “The Embargo Buster,” and “The Merchant of Death.” But the real name of the burly 41-year-old Russian, briefly paraded in handcuffs, is Viktor Bout. According to Thai police, who captured him in a Bangkok hotel room, he was attempting “to procure weapons for Colombia’s FARC rebels.”
He is the subject of an American arrest warrant, and it is likely the American government played a major role in his arrest.
Mr. Bout built his extraordinary business empire on elaborate obfuscation, the ability to get anything to anywhere, and complete immorality. According to Lee Wolosky, formerly of the United States National Security Council: “He had a logistics network, the best in the world.
“There are lot of people who can deliver arms to Africa or Afghanistan, but you can count on one hand those who can deliver major weapons systems rapidly. Viktor Bout is at the top of that list.”
