Viktor Bout

Viktor Anatolyevich Bout (Ви́ктор Анато́льевич Бут; born 13 January 1967) is a Tajik-born Russian arms dealer.

United Nations documents and Bout himself both state his birthplace as Dushanbe, Tajik SSR, Soviet Union (now the capital of Tajikistan), and that his date of birth is most likely 13 January 1967, although several other dates are possible.

He has an older brother named Sergei Bout.

He is reported to be fluent in Esperanto, which he learned at age 12 in the early 1980s as a member of the Dushanbe Esperanto club.

Bout's personal website stated that he served in the Soviet Army as a translator, holding the rank of lieutenant.

Bout was involved with a Soviet military operation in Angola in the late 1980s assisting the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in the Angolan Civil War.

He has stated that he was in Angola only for a few weeks.

During this time in Africa he went on to learn the Xhosa and Zulu languages.

It is believed that Bout as a former member of the Soviet military was perfectly positioned to purchase surplus Soviet-era military equipment, including three Antonov An-12 aircraft, in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A weapons manufacturer and former Soviet military translator, he used his multiple companies to smuggle arms from Eastern Europe to Africa and the Middle East during the 1990s and early 2000s.

Bout acknowledges traveling to Afghanistan on numerous occasions during the 1990s, but has denied dealing with al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

Bout became a Russian citizen following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

According to the UN Security Council Committee on Liberia, Bout holds at least four passports.

A number of sources referred to Bout as a Tajik national or Tajik-born.

Bout served in the Soviet Armed Forces.

There is no definite information on his military career except that he graduated from the Soviet Military Institute of Foreign Languages.

Bout's training allowed him to become a polyglot and master five foreign languages: Portuguese, English, French, Arabic, and Farsi.

Bout is thought to have been discharged from the Soviet Army upon its dissolution in 1991 with the rank of lieutenant colonel, whereupon he started an air freight business.

Other sources state he was a major in the GRU, an officer in the Soviet Air Forces, that he graduated from a Soviet military intelligence training program, or an operative of the KGB.

Beginning in 1994, Bout made shipments for the pre-Taliban government of Afghanistan, which later became the Northern Alliance, and knew one of its commanders, Ahmad Shah Massoud.

The Central Intelligence Agency described Bout-owned planes as transporters of small arms and ammunition into Afghanistan.

According to Bout's personal website, he founded an air freight business, Air Cess, in Liberia in 1995.

Air Cess is the only company connected to Bout that has ever officially recognized him as the head.

He operated four Antonov An-8 planes in Angola as it was the only country to allow the An-8 to be used in civilian freight at the time.

Reportedly, Bout's companies legally provided air freight services to the French government, the United Nations, and the United States, including transporting flowers, frozen chicken, UN peacekeepers, French soldiers, and African heads of state.

Around this time, Bout earned the nickname of "Sanctions Buster" due to his implication in facilitating the violation of United Nations arms embargoes in the western African countries of Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In 1995, Bout was involved in negotiations to free Russian hostages during the 1995 Airstan incident.

In 2000, a United Nations report stated, "Bulgarian arms manufacturing companies had exported large quantities of different types of weapons between 1996 and 1998 on the basis of (forged ) end-user certificates from Togo", and that "with only one exception, the company Air Cess, owned by Victor Bout, was the main transporter of these weapons from Burgas airport in Bulgaria".

This was the first time Bout was formally mentioned in connection with arms trafficking.

Bout gained the nicknames the "Merchant of Death" and "Sanctions Buster" after British minister Peter Hain read a report to the United Nations in 2003 on Bout's wide-reaching operations, extensive clientele, and willingness to bypass embargoes.

In a US sting operation Bout was arrested in 2008 in Thailand on terrorism charges by the Royal Thai Police in cooperation with American authorities and Interpol.

The United States Ambassador to Thailand Eric G. John requested his extradition to the United States, which was eventually mandated by the Thai High Court in 2010.

Bout was accused of intending to sell arms to a United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) informer pretending to represent the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) for use against American forces in Colombia, but Bout denied the charges and predicted an acquittal.

In 2011 Bout was convicted by a jury at a federal court in Manhattan, of conspiracy to kill American citizens and officials, delivery of anti-aircraft missiles, and providing aid to a terrorist organization; he was sentenced to the minimum 25 years' imprisonment because the crime was due to the sting operation.

From 2012 until 2022, Bout was held at the United States Penitentiary, Marion.

In 2022, he was released in a prisoner exchange for American basketball player Brittney Griner, who had been incarcerated by Russian authorities for illegally bringing cannabis oil into the country.

Bout had served 10 years in prison before his release in December 2022.

After returning to Russia, Bout joined the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia in 2022 and stood to run for a seat in the Legislative Assembly of Ulyanovsk Oblast as a member of the LDPR on July 2, 2023.

He won.

Bout's origins are unclear.