Victor Booth

Victor Booth

Russian businessman, known as one of the biggest illegal arms dealers in the world

Russian businessman, called the U.S. secret services one of the biggest illegal arms dealers in the world. In March 2008, was arrested in the capital of Thailand, in August 2010, the appellate court in Thailand has agreed to extradite a businessman in the U.S..

According to the newspaper "Vedomosti" and other publications, Victor A. Booth was born on January 13, 1967 in Dushanbe - the capital of the Tajik SSR. In this very place of his birth Booth called it Ashgabat (the capital of the Belorussian SSR), the Dushanbe. South Africa's intelligence agencies have called him a Ukrainian, and Russian press - Russian.
Booth grew up in the Tajik SSR. After serving in the army, the summer of 1987 he entered the Military Language Institute, specializing in Portuguese language. Having a specialty and rank of second lieutenant, he served as an interpreter in Mozambique and Angola as part of a United Nations (UN). In 1990, after the accelerated Chinese language course without completing the Institute, Booth retired from the army with the rank of lieutenant and joined the Union of cooperatives of the USSR. There he was a translator at the center of the organization of air transportation, he worked in Brazil and Mozambique. Booth said that he never was in service in the KGB or the GRU, although intelligence agencies in South Africa and Britain claimed that he was an agent of the Soviet secret police from 1985 to 1989.
In late 1991, Booth decided to start their own business, becoming the aviation broker. In 1993, Booth moved to the UAE and Sharjah Airport made the main base for his new airline. Booth said that his planes were taken flowers, business equipment and legitimate military goods: in 1994, his aircraft carried out transfer of French military forces in Angola and Belgium - in Somalia. In 1996, his company has made the delivery of Russian fighters to Malaysia. Bout-owned aircraft in 1990 participated in the transfer of UN peacekeepers in Somalia and East Timor in 1994 to deliver humanitarian assistance and the French troops in Rwanda. The pilots who worked at Booth refused to talk about whether they were taken weapons, but admitted that the cargo was usually in the boarded-up boxes.
In the early 1990's Booth was the founder of the company registered in Kazan, Transavia (according to other sources, has collaborated with the Belarusian company Transavia Export Cargo). Also in the Alma-Ata was registered his company IRBIS. In 1995 it became known that Booth may be implicated in arms trade: August 3 in the Afghan city of Kandahar, militants from the opposition movement "Taliban"with his MiG-21 put and seized a Russian Ilyushin-76 aircraft, which belonged to the Kazan company Aerostan and a commercial flight from Tirana-Sharjah-Kabul under a contract with Booth led the company Transavia. On board the plane were cartridges. Pilots held captive by the Taliban and were able to leave Afghanistan until 1996. The press wrote that after the incident with the IL-76 Booth began without any intermediaries to supply weapons to the Taliban andal-Qaeda", and these deliveries continued until the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. In total, according to British intelligence (MI-6), he could deliver weapons to the Taliban of $ 30 or $ 50 million.
From 1995 to 1997, Booth worked in Belgium, in 1997, went into business in South Africa, where he bought an abandoned airfield and began importation of frozen chickens from Europe. His South African Airlines in late 1997, was called Air Pass, and Booth, according to the press, owned from 43 to 60 planes, the advantage of the variety of mark "AN". Prior to that in Liberia from 1995 to 1996 operated the airline Air Cess (or Cessair, Air Cess Liberia), then it was re-registered in Equatorial Guinea, but continued to be based in Sharjah. In South Africa, Booth worked until 1998, when the authorities revoked his license to air (according to Bout, it was done under U.S. pressure).
In 2000, the UN Security Council asked a group of experts to prepare a report on the compliance regime of the international embargo against Angola, where nearly 30 years of civil war. The experts concluded that the rebels of UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, Unito Nacional para a Independencia Total de Angola) continued to circumvent the embargo to receive arms from Bulgaria and Romania, which supplied the weapons Booth. Similar reports in the year accused Bout of supplying weapons to the rebels from Sierra Leone and Liberia, actually calling him the owner of the world's largest network of illegal arms sales.
In 2001, Booth was forced to leave the UAE, and in 2002, Belgium has accused the businessman in diamond smuggling and money laundering worth about $ 300 million from 1994 to 2001 and announced his international arrest warrant. According to his wife Alla Bout, businessman finally went bankrupt in 2002 and openly lived in Russia, trying not to go abroad and not being engaged in aviation business. In 2002, the UN imposed a ban on the movement Bout, and in 2005 together with the U.S. demanded to freeze the accounts of a Russian businessman and all related companies and individuals. Booth argued that as a result of UN sanctions has lost about 17 million dollars.
Booth categorically rejected all charges of arms trafficking and illegal shipments to bypass the embargo. He claimed that he never contacted the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and the U.S. decided to shift the guilt for arming the Taliban. However, when asked whether his aircraft carrying weapons Booth replied evasively, saying that he never committed, and could not commit illegal traffic.
March 6, 2008 Booth was arrested in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, on a warrant issued by the United States. He was detained by employees of the drug U.S., posing as rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who allegedly planned to buy his missiles, surface-to-air missiles. U.S. officials have said they would seek extradition of Bout. The media have reported that if the bout will be tried in Thailand, he could face up to ten years imprisonment on charges of aiding terrorism. According to the wife of Bout, who soon after the arrest of her husband asked for help from the Foreign Minister , Sergei Lavrov, her husband came to Thailand for talks on building a plant for production of disposable syringes for African countries.
April 9, 2008 Thai prosecutor refused to charge Bout in Thailand. May 6, 2008, U.S. authorities formally brought charges against Bout charges and sent to Thailand extradition request for Bout. In August 2009, the criminal court in Bangkok, having considered the request, has not found sufficient grounds for extradition of Russian businessman. In September of that year, after filing an appeal, the criminal court in Bangkok declined to release Bout bail, fearing that he will try to abscond and leave Thailand. In February 2010 the U.S. presented new charges against him.
August 20, 2010 Court of Appeal overturned last year's Thai trial court's decision and agreed to extradite Bout to the U.S.. It was reported that it is not appealable.
Booth is married with a daughter. The elder brother of Victor Bout, Sergei, continues to air a legal business in Sharjah and Bulgaria.