Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible

by Douglas Farah

  Savimbi’s envoy, Colonel Alcides Lucas Kangunga (known as “Kallias”), had little difficulty cutting a deal with President Gnassingbe Eyadema on the matter. A hulking man with a badly pocked face and weak eyes usually covered with wraparound sunglasses, Eyadema was one of Africa’s classic “Big Men.” He seized power in 1967, while Lyndon Johnson was still president and the Vietnam War was raging. Through corruption, intimidation, and brutality, Eyadema had survived long past most of his peers, and did not relinquish power until he died in February 2005. Kallias was instructed to tell Eyadema that Zaire was a country of many problems and that UNITA needed to prepare itself militarily. Kallias was to emphasize to Eyadema that UNITA needed weapons and credible EUCs.

  A UN investigation summarized the results of the meeting: Savimbi’s proposal that Togo play a more active role in support of UNITA (a proposal that also included Togo hosting some of Savimbi’s children) was accepted by President Eyadema in late 1993. As a token of appreciation, Kallias gave to Eyadema a “passport-sized” packet of diamonds on Savimbi’s behalf. According to Kallias, the working arrangement between Togo and UNITA provided for Togo to keep a share of the arms and military equipment that was imported for UNITA, normally 20 percent. In each case Eyadema could decide whether Togo would take its share in kind or in cash.30

  Savimbi placed his bets well. Mobutu was less and less able to work the network that Savimbi relied on, and Eyadema proved to be a capable, if somewhat expensive, alternative. By 1996, Bout was regularly using the certificates provided by Eyadema and his cronies to ferry weapons and mining equipment to Savimbi.31

  Burkina Faso and the region’s economic and weapons hub, Ivory Coast, were also supporters of Savimbi. Within a few years Bout had gained entrée into the upper echelons of these countries as well. While not at war, they, like Togo, could be useful, and all formed vital links in a chain of civil wars that required a constant supply of weapons. Bout procured EUCs and landing rights in these countries, building a network that would allow his weapons deliveries to go forward seamlessly.32

  Ivory Coast’s aging dictator Félix Houphouët-Boigny was not only a longtime Savimbi supporter but also was the key regional backer of Charles Taylor when Taylor launched his 1989 Christmas Eve insurrection against the government in neighboring Liberia. Through this web of connections, Bout met with Taylor in the early 1990s but did not begin doing serious business with him until Taylor assumed the Liberian presidency in 1997. The meeting served to open a valuable channel of communications that would later prove to be mutually beneficial.

  CHAPTER 5

  At a Crossroads

  By 1996, Bout’s air cargo operation was busy across Africa. With air operations expanding in South Africa, Bout laid plans to move his entire family, including his mother-in-law, from Sharjah to Johannesburg, where he had been spending an increasing amount of time.1 While Sharjah was more centrally located and convenient for his ongoing business in Afghanistan, Bout told friends that Africa was where he wanted to live. Bout loved spending time and hunting in the sparsely populated bush. He talked often about the chance to acquaint his young daughter with African life and allow her to grow up close to the jungle.

  He also sought new horizons. Bout was reportedly interested in broadening his transportation empire into the telecommunications business.2 His air operations in Africa were consolidating and growing rapidly, with steady business from Mobutu, UNITA, and Rwanda. He was branching out to Europe, and he still maintained his schedule of flights to Afghanistan as Taliban forces advanced on Kabul, on the verge of triumph. In Africa his air fleet thrived, rarely troubled by ground control or inspections. Gary Busch, who was Bout’s rival in arming the other sides in some of the same African conflicts, said he once found that three of Bout’s airplanes were operating with the same tail number and using the same air operations papers. “That’s just the way it was,” Busch said. “No one cared.”

  “He was always on the move then,” said an African who spent a great deal of time with Bout in the mid-1990s. “He was visiting Taylor, Mobutu, Savimbi, and flying back to Sharjah. He was trying to get planes and moving them around. It seemed like he didn’t really have time to sleep.”

  South Africa was attractive for several reasons. He could remain relatively close to the Great Lakes region, where he was working, and to his operations in Angola. Despite the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela, the white-dominated security forces continued to send weapons to UNITA. And South Africa offered the best opportunities for legitimate business, something Bout correctly sensed could be a lucrative, if not dominant, part of his growing empire. No other African capital could match Johannesburg’s urban charm and sophistication. Bout’s daughter had been born in Kinshasa in 1994, but the town was a nightmare. Bout began looking for a partner in his budding South African air business, someone who would give him legitimacy and allow him to operate unmolested by the sometimes inquisitive South African authorities.

  By early 1997, Bout’s plan was unfolding. He and his family moved to Johannesburg, staying first at the luxurious Sandton Sun International Hotel and later the Intercontinental Hotel. His wife, Alla, opened a clothing business called AB Fashions. Making good on his talk about altruistic ventures, Bout persuaded the manager of AB Fashions, Leslie Whalley, to set up a training school for disadvantaged children.

  He established his new South African branch at Gateway Airport in Pietersburg, near the border with Zimbabwe. Pietersburg was in a part of the country where wildlife abounds and the climate is temperate. It was also an airport where Bout would be under far less scrutiny than in a commercial hub. He found a South African partner named Dierdre Ward, who could obtain the necessary business permits and who owned a company that already had valid air operating certificates. Norse Air, Ward’s firm, was looking to increase its charter capacity. She had the routes Bout needed, and Bout, through his ability to acquire aircraft, had the capacity. It seemed like a perfect match.3

  On February 19, 1997, Bout’s Liberian company, Air Cess, and Norse Air registered a new company in South Africa called Pietersburg Aviation Services and Systems Pty. The new company, like many Bout entities, actually did business under another name, Air Pass. Bout owned 90 percent of the new company (spelling his name Butt on the ownership papers), and Ward the remainder. In exchange for her 10 percent ownership stake, Ward let Bout use Norse Air’s charter operator’s license, which allowed the new company to operate in South Africa. Air Cess, Bout’s original company, used Norse Air, Ward’s company, to apply for its own foreign operator’s license in South Africa.4 According to Richard Chichakli, Bout paid for his stake with $2 million in cash.5 Bout’s South African air fleet soon numbered about thirty, capable of handling as much as 150 tons of cargo, and he hired several dozen employees. Within six months, Air Pass flight operations extended to Angola, the DRC, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Kenya, Somalia, and Liberia.6 Bout also imported millions of dollars’ worth of spare parts for a maintenance facility for Russian aircraft that he planned to open in Pietersburg.7 In addition to the air freight business, Bout invested in a cold storage unit, at one point carrying $4 million of stock in a hangar at the airport.

  Bout mulled bigger plans. One was to open a South African version of Sharjah’s free-trade zone with the help of Chichakli. Bout also wanted to start a garment business and a clothing factory. To help with his finances, he brought down another financial handler, Olivier Piret, a banker friend of his from Switzerland. To lure him down, Bout promised to help Piret, who was under investigation by Swiss authorities, acquire South African citizenship.8

  Bout’s move to South Africa offered the opportunity to ease up on his grinding lifestyle. Entranced by the breathtaking landscapes of unsullied forests, tangled jungle, sweeping deserts, and barren cliffs that he saw on almost every flight into Africa, Bout had intimated to associates that he was mulling over another career besides selling weapons and moving dangerous freight. Much later, when he was traveling with Bemba, Bout tol
d Draulans that he had wanted to build modern agricultural projects and satellite-based telecommunications systems in the DRC, a country riven by war and devoid of electronic infrastructure. He talked of preserving the environment and helping local indigenous groups organize themselves to fight poachers. He wanted to protect elephants and create hunting preserves for businessmen willing to invest in the region. He jotted his ideas down on paper and told Draulans that he had even flown in technicians from Dubai to study the feasibility of his schemes. But it was never clear if his ruminations were a real change of heart, deeply cherished fantasies, or artful conversation pieces devised to present an altruistic facade to outsiders.

  “He talked about this all the time, but no one thought any of it was very realistic,” Draulans concluded.

  Chichakli claimed that Bout invested in some projects in the DRC, including two bakeries and a water treatment plant in Goma, one of the rebel strongholds. But no one else familiar with the region recalled any of Bout’s humanitarian gestures coming to fruition.

  By August 1997 Bout was set to make South Africa his primary residence. He paid about $3 million for a mansion in the plush residential Sandhurst district of Johannesburg, and then considerably more to renovate the facility to look like a castle—reportedly a request from his wife. The result was imposing, if not quite aesthetically pleasing. The house and property had fifteen-foot walls topped by electric and barbed-wire fences. It was patrolled around the clock by heavily armed security guards and watchdogs—at a cost of $12,000 a day, more than most South Africans earned in a year. The team of twenty-six guards and five dogs was led by a senior South African intelligence officer.9 Chichakli, who stayed with Bout there, described the house as having the look of a “detention facility from hell.”10

  Inside the walled compound Bout built a luxurious retreat. There were two swimming pools; a large, well-appointed guest-house; cascading waterfalls; and lush tropical plants. In January 1998 Bout cleared $20,000 worth of furniture through South African customs. The next month he and his wife, daughter, and mother-in-law moved into their new home.11 It was an opulent prize for a thirty-year-old Russian pilot with no family wealth to draw on.

  Just three months after Bout moved his family into the mansion, disaster struck on several fronts. The sudden crises showed how difficult it would be for Bout to ever go legitimate, even if he wanted to.

  One warm March afternoon, Bout’s mother-in-law was cutting up fruit in the kitchen while Bout and his wife played tennis across the street. Suddenly a series of grenade blasts forced open the main door and several armed intruders stormed inside. The highly paid guards put up little resistance.

  The elderly Russian woman grabbed a watermelon and smashed it on the head of one of the gunmen. She was knocked unconscious by a rifle butt. When Bout arrived on the scene, he also was roughed up. The intruders stole $6 million in cash, leaving expensive painting and jewelry untouched.

  The well-executed attack was a message. Intelligence services believed it could have been a warning by rival Russian organized criminal gangs who felt Bout was growing too big—or else from someone to whom Bout owed money or merchandise. South African police opened an investigation, “Operation Jacuzzi,” but turned up little information. This was not a surprise, given that the guards, who apparently had ties to the government security forces, appeared acquiescent in the assault. Other incidents followed. A gunman reportedly fired shots at Bout’s car, though appearing to intentionally miss. The accountant Piret was mugged, and his fiancée lost a diamond ring to thieves who also threatened to lop off her ring finger. “The message was you’re vulnerable, so get out,” said Chichakli.12

  Message received, Bout put the house up for sale and moved everyone back to Sharjah. His South African business hub soon unraveled. Questionable accounting practices in his aviation and commodities businesses had led to growing strife with Ward and other partners. Losing the $6 million invested in his house left Bout in a financial crunch. South African government organizations opened up investigations into his business practices and eventually found 146 violations of civil aviation law. Before the South African authorities could act, Bout shifted most of his operation to neighboring Swaziland. South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs declared Bout an “undesirable alien” and refused to grant him a visa to return from Sharjah.

  Ward claimed that Bout had left behind large debts and was responsible for her crumbling business prospects. On March 20, 1998, she sent a memo to Bout in Sharjah, urgently requesting money. When none was forthcoming, she sent follow-up memos, then turned on him, alerting South African officials of a possible Bout attempt to sneak into the country. “We believe that VB is traveling under a false passport under the name of George Trodannov,” she wrote to the prosecutor handling his case. “We are told he has grown a beard . . . he will be leaving South Africa by road into Swaziland between now and Tuesday.”13 But Bout was not arrested.

  Bout has never talked about who might have made the threats. But Chichakli openly accused Ward of saddling Bout with high debt—$1 million for an air firm, Metavia, that went bankrupt. Chichakli also railed that Ward was the source of arms flights attributed to Bout. But Ward, like Bout, was never charged in South Africa for any weapons sale offenses.

  “He doesn’t come off as a crook,” Ward said several years after her falling out with Bout. “He could charm you in seven or eight languages.”14

  In May 1998, aviation officials in neighboring Swaziland, under pressure from South African authorities, grounded forty-three aircraft from five Bout companies, accusing the firms of a lack of adequate documentation and illegal gun running from Mozambique to Angola. Among the cargo found on one of the grounded aircraft were two disassembled Russian military helicopters packed in crates labeled “machine parts.” Investigators suspected that the gunships were destined for Rwanda.15 Swazi officials stripped the Bout planes of their civil registrations. But though supposedly grounded, the aircraft were soon spotted flying elsewhere in Africa.

  For Bout, it was a return to business as usual. His chance for a different life in South Africa—if he had ever truly considered it—was gone now. His organization was barely slowed by the government actions. His planes were simply reregistered and flown out across porous, poorly patrolled borders. In several cases the tail numbers were not even repainted. No one noticed.

  Bout’s successor airline was Centrafricain Airlines, registered in the Central African Republic and based at the offices of his Transavia Travel Agency in Sharjah. Several of Centrafricain’s planes had been Bout aircraft that were deregistered in either Swaziland or Liberia. Soon Centrafricain planes were sighted delivering weapons to UNITA, freshly painted with the “TL” call letters of the Central African Republic.16 Bout registered another company, Cessavia, in Equatorial Guinea in 1998. The operation was painless. Bout’s associate Michael Harridine ran Equatorial Guinea’s aviation registry. Cessavia was relisted as Air Cess, operating out of Sharjah. Neatly, even though the two companies registered in the Central African Republic and Equatorial Guinea had different addresses, they shared the same phone and fax numbers in Sharjah.17

  Bout’s cash bind appeared to ease. He and his family were settled in Sharjah, but his business was brisk enough to allow him to rent a floor of the Meridien Hotel in Kigali, Rwanda, for himself and his pilots. Bout received a lucrative contract to train the Ugandan air force, a contract described in one intelligence report as making him “basically responsible for the creation of the new Ugandan air force.”18

  Business activity in West Africa was also growing, and Bout found another home away from home in Monrovia, the broken-down capital of Liberia. Monrovia had the distinction of being the only capital city with no lights, water service, or garbage pickup. Already friends with Charles Taylor, Liberia’s new president, Bout was soon a regular visitor and was assigned a special bodyguard to make sure he got what he needed and had direct access to Taylor at any time.

  “His big advantage
is that he was portable,” said former State Department veteran Thomas Pickering. “He could move his support system around. He had a hub, but he could do what he did anywhere.”

  Bout soon began using the Liberian base for audacious new plans. He became an intimate in Taylor’s circle, granted access that few others had. In acknowledgment of his influence, Taylor’s underlings began referring to him simply as “Mr. Vic.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The Chase Begins

  The Western world caught on slowly to the expanding dimensions of Viktor Bout’s arms network.

  In Afghanistan, evidence of his weapons deliveries had surfaced briefly during the Taliban’s 1995 capture of his Ilyushin freighter and crew and their sudden escape after a year of imprisonment. But the episode barely registered in the United States other than a few brief news wire items and perfunctory diplomatic cables to Washington. In strife-torn Africa, where Bout’s weapons delivery routes had penetrated deep into remote war zones, he remained a phantom, mostly unknown except to the Big Men and rebel leaders he catered to and the fixers, mercenaries, and rival weapons dealers who plied the same circles.