The Underworld Podcast - The Merchant of Death: Arms Dealer Viktor Bout

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

They called him "The Merchant of Death" - the world's most dangerous man. But was gun-runner Viktor Bout actually the arms trade's fall guy? From Angola to Zaire and everywhere in between, Bout's black-market weapons have fueled the globe's most grisly gangs and conflicts. But despite Nic Cage's excellent performance in Lord of War, there's far more to the real Viktor Bout than his Hollywood image suggests. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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in, uh, in his Berlin bathroom right now. Yeah, there might be some like Berlin bikers coming streaming down the road, but I think we're going to, I think we're going to manage it. And, uh, yeah, more serious matters. Um, we should address Sean's, uh, Sean's gambling problem. He right now is in debt with a bunch of, uh, Moldovan gangsters who operate, um, out of Copenhagen, I think, they're a bunch of co-dealers. Sean owes them a lot of money. You know, he's, you know, He's in the worst kind of trouble with the worst kind of people. For us to keep doing this, we need you to go to the Patreon. Patreon.com slash the Underworld Podcast.

You know, support us $3 a month, $5 a month to get bonus episodes. Just to make sure that Sean keeps all his fingers. Otherwise, he can't really push the recording buttons and we're in trouble. I've got like a week to go. Yeah, I'm pretty confident. This isn't an intervention. Like I think it's on brand that this guy is like addicted to betting on women's ice hockey and he's really bad at it.

So now he owes him all dove and Coke. He owes a lot of money. And I think it really helps. But we want to pay them so we can keep recording. Please. Yeah. I mean, cool, whatever. But please, yeah.

And just, Sean, get better at gambling. I will. I mean, those ice hockey games don't fix themselves, man. So I'll figure it out. All right. So who are we talking about today? Yeah, today we're talking about Victor Boot. There's a guy, you might have heard of him.

He's an arms dealer. he's sometimes known as the merchant of death. And for most people listening to this who've heard of him, maybe, this is probably their first port of call. Enjoy it. What? This. Tell me I'm everything you despise.

That I'm the personification of evil. That I'm what? Responsible for the breakdown of the fabric of society and world order. I'm a one-man genocide. Say everything you want to say to me now. Because you don't have long. Are you paying attention? Or are you delusional?

You have broken every arm's embargo written. Okay, so that's Nick Cage being amazing, as he always is. That's 2005's Lord of War. Great film, by the way, really, really fun. But actually said he liked the movie, and he even kept a copy in his Moscow home. Jared Leto, man, hell of our performance there. And, you know, I think next week we're doing the Brighton Beach episode

about the Russian gangsters of Brighton Beach, and that kind of plays into it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, in the film, they kind of grow up there, right? And they pretend to be Jewish to get by coming from the Soviet Union. It's kind of a cool story. But this might shock you, actually.

The movie's kind of a bit bullshit. There's no Bryant Beach in the real Victor Boot story. Actually, the fact he kept getting denied a US visa became a thing for him, actually. And there's no supermodel love interest for Boot. No Jared Leo sniffing coke off the back of a limousine. Okay, hold up. I'm pretty sure both of those things that probably happened. Like, I'm pretty sure Victor Boot has slept with supermodels and Jared Leto has sniffed coke off the back of a limousine.

Well, I'm going to go with one of them, right? I'm pretty sure that Jared Leo one has happened. And I think Jared Leo might have slept with the supermodel, but from what you're going to learn about Victor Boot, you might be a little bit surprised. He's not kind of the supervillain that he's portrayed in the film. There's actually a much better film out there for learning about Victor Boot, but I'm going to get into that in a bit. But the weird thing is, Lord of War kind of helped get Victor Boot sent down in the end. For years before that, he was a complete mystery, this ghost, no one could find him, no one could track him down. Until the early 2000s, there were actually only two known pictures of the guy offloading weapons in a DR Congo.

Yeah, it's a common crime boss mistake. Like, never let them make a movie about you. Don't give Rolling Stone an interview. You know, it kind of flaunts your immunity to prosecution when you do that kind of thing. And law enforcement agencies don't look kindly on that. they kind of take it as a slap in the face. Yeah, for sure. And we're going to get into that in a little bit.

He did a New York Times piece that was just like hilarious. Cage's boot is this kind of stern villainous guy stepping over bullet casings in the world's worst war zones. The real boot is much, much more interesting, actually, and way bigger. Cage's merchant of death is to Victor Boot what your local FedEx guy is to Santa Claus, basically. So Victor Boot, I'm pretty sure some of you listeners

would have heard of this guy. Got his break in the chaos of the Soviet Union collapse, sold arms to some of the most shady characters on earth, got stung by the feds in the end, he's kind of become a standing for the illegal arms trade. When he was caught 12 years ago, American prosecutors lay on so thick, it's kind of laughable these days.

This head of the DAA, who spoke about himself in the third person all the time on this 60 minutes, I think it was, he called Boot, quote, the most dangerous man on the face of the earth, selling weapons to, quote again, a po-pery of human scum. You reckon they wanted to catch him much?

Yeah, but isn't that kind of true? crew, like he did all those things, right? He kind of did it, right? But again, there's this kind of gray area, and we're going to get into that, like, a bit later on in the story. But, I mean, for a while, this guy was untouchable. The US government even said so openly. It's kind of the Scarlet Pimpernel, the arms trade.

Each time someone got a lead, he disappeared. The network of companies he set up pretty much span the entire world. Governments used them. My government did. So did yours. Who helped ship stuff for the U.S. Army in Iraq, for example? I'm sorry, but this is. is exactly like the movie. I think you owe the screenwriter an apology for your earlier comments.

Okay, an official apology is his or hers way. But there's also this amazing book called Merchant of Death that's by the journalist Douglas Farrow and Stephen Brown. And that came off the back of a foreign policy article to help make him this kind of celebrity in the mid-2000s, right when America was dealing with Iraq, Afghanistan, 9-11. There's this great quote from the original story that goes a bit like this. In an age where the U.S. President has divided the world into those who are with the United States and those who are against it. Boot is both. In the 1990s, Boot was a friend and supplier to the legendary Ahmed Shah Matood,

leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, while simultaneously selling weapons and aircraft to the Taliban, Massoud's enemy. His fleet flew for the government of Angola, as well as the Unita rebels seeking to overthrow it. He sent an aircraft to rescue Mobutu Seseko, the alien and corrupt ruler of Zaire, even though he'd supply the rebels who were closing in on Mobutu's last stronghold. He's catered to Charles Taylor of Liberia, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia,

and Libyan strongman Muammar El-Qaddafi. Wait, so the DA guy was right as well. I mean, for once, the DA was right. So I think you owe him an apology too. Okay, I'm going to do a little like glossary down the bottom of the apologies. I'm going to have to dish out after this one. But anyway, suffice to say that this guy is not normal, right? And pretty much everything about Victor Boots' life is a maze at first.

So his story starts in 1967 in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, then part of the Soviet Union, although some sources of a said he was born in Turkmenistan or even Ukraine, which kind of tells you everything about the guys' early years. Yeah, you know, from one thing I've learned from doing research for the Brighton Beach episode is that all these gangsters who came out of the former Soviet Union, there was just completely fluid stories about them, where they were born, how old they are, what their backgrounds were, like it's a really hard thing to crack. Yeah, and I mean, like, for those guys in Booth,

it really served a purpose, right? Because it just sent people off on different tangents for years and years trying to figure out who the hell this guy was. Like Dushanbe is where most people think that he's from, right? So at the time, it was a scratch on the Soviet landscape, backwater. It kind of is now, I guess. And Boots' father was an auto mechanic

and his mother, a bookkeeper. It's hardly an auspicious start for the guy. But he really gets into languages, and he learns English by listening to Abba and Chicago Records, which is actually how I did it as well. I mean, this sounds like a proper. rag to Rich's story, you know, a son of the working class. Oh, he is. He is. I mean, it gets way better as well. I mean, by all accounts, Boot is a bit of a linguistic genius, right?

So even as a young guy speaking fluent English, French, Uzbek, and he soon picks up some African languages too. According to a 2012 New Yorker feature by a Nicholas Schmiddle, Boot can read 15 or 16 languages, go to the market in 9 or 10, and fluently speak 5 or 6. It's like amazing how many international crime lords are like switched on to languages in this way. That's a great point. I mean, if you remember an Irish gang war episode, Kinnahan, who runs one of the biggest cartels in Europe, he spent time in prison learning languages to expand his business. It's just such a useful business skill speaking multiple languages, especially if you're doing logistics internationally and making groups, you know, making deals with groups from all over the world.

Yeah, I mean, if you're behind bars, it's probably better to learn a language for your business than it is like just doing loads of setups and like dumbbells, right? I mean, I think you can do both. And it might be the only way I can actually get in proper shape and learn a language would be to be locked in prison. So, you know. You should have the gambling there. That's the problem.

The young boot, he works for the Soviet Air Force and he heads off to Moscow to work for this prestigious language institute that's like a primer for guys heading into intelligence work. He majors in Portuguese, which might sound a bit weird. But at the time, two of the Soviet Union's proxies, Mozambique and Angola, are going through civil wars and the Kremlin wants Russian hands on deck. Boots denied he was actually ever a secret agent at all, but the evidence kind of speaks otherwise. British spies have claimed he was stationed in Rome for the KGB between 85 and 89.

It would make sense he was a spook when so many were focused on funneling funds and guns to guerrilla fighters in a developing world during the Cold War. Sounds like he's basically functioning as an arms dealer for the state, which is perfect training to become an arms dealer for yourself. Oh yeah. Like he's got all the connections by the time he gets. it's into business. Like, whatever the truth of his background, right, by 1988,

Boot is definitely in Maputo, Mozambique, and he's at some party at the Soviet embassy when he starts chatting to this woman called Alaproto Sova. I'm going to screw up all the Russian names in this. Who's there with her husband, who's a translator too. So she's got something for languages.

Boot falls in love with her right away, and he starts sending her all these self-penned poems when she goes back to Moscow, the day dog. We've got to get our hands on those poems. Oh man, I bet they're amazingly shit. No, I bet they're good, man. Yeah? Yeah, he speaks all these languages.

I mean, he's probably writing it in Hindi or something, so we're not going to know either way. I imagine they're amazing, but anyway, keep going, sorry. She tells a reporter later that, quote, he drags you in, which is kind of, uh, that sounds like love to me. Anyway, he definitely dragged Ella in because by 1991, she's left her husband and she's married Boot and they're living in Moscow together.

So, as you can imagine, 1991 is a mad time to be living in Russia. The walls down, Europe's breaking up, and the Soviet Empire in Moscow is crashing down too. Boris Eeltsin's talking about freedom, but people can't eat. And the country's wealth is getting eaten up by all these robber barons and gangsters. We're going to get into a bunch of these guys further down the line too, I know. And a lot next week in the Brighton Beach episode. Definitely, yeah. So who decides, hell, I'm going to be one of them.

And he's got a plan, right? This whole time old Soviet cargo planes, the massive ones, the Aleutians and the Antonobs, they're just laying around gathering dust. Guns, grenades, RPGs, the lot. They're laying about in warehouses too, meant for Soviet client states in Africa, Asia, Latin America, wherever. Warlords and rebels still want these things, and Boone knows where they are. He's also got contacts in Soviet intelligence, and he knows guys on the ground in Angola, Mozambique, I mean, pretty much everywhere else that's on fire at the time.

This is his niche. One guy says Boot was given three planes in 1992 by the GRU, the USSR's intelligence network, and returned for a cut of his profits. Another guy said he bought them for 120 grand and flew a maiden crew to Denmark. Either way, the merchant of death is up and running, and he's barely 25 years old.

I think I was in New York, working as a receptionist when I was 25, actually. So that's goals. Yeah, it sounds like they just kind of Americanized the movie a bit and made him an American immigrant, but I got to tell you, man, it sounds pretty spot on for right now. Yeah, I'm starting to come around now.

Shit, I'm seeing the similarities. By 1993, and this doesn't happen in the movie, so screw the screen right here. But it moves to Sharger, which is one of the UAE's Emirates. And there's a specific reason for that, right? So it's this conservative desert, two-horse town right next to Dubai, with none of Dubai's glitz or glamour. I actually lived in Dubai for a year myself,

and Charger's still this weird, driftwood kind of sprawl. It's populated by Pakistani laborers, shipping companies. It's still dry as well, so you can't get a drink. Like, Dubai definitely is not, by the way. I lived in a hotel there for a couple of months, and every weekend morning we go down the bar for breakfast, and they were like dozens of Saudi guys and dish dashes

sprawled across the barstools and tables, still wasted from the night before. So that's where they all come to get hammered. What were you doing in a hotel in Dubai for a few? I mean, that's like one of the shaddiest sentences a man can utter. Yeah, yeah. That's 2008. That's the financial crash.

So some people ended up like in Amazon warehouses and I ended up at some weird trade publication in Dubai. So that's how my amazing sterling career got going. So Booth's reason for being in Sharjah are plenty, right? So first it's got secretive banking laws. And the UAE is one of only three states worldwide to recognize the Taliban, alongside the Saudis in Pakistan. But he started building this dense web of shipping firms, which I'll get into soon.

But Afghanistan was one of his biggest target areas. It fought with the Soviets in the late 80s, and its government was battling against the ultra-conservatives Taliban in the civil war. That just shows dollar signs for Boot, pretty much. And he hires his brother Sergey as an ops manager, and he goes to work. Jared Leto, man. Seriously.

But also, Boot just seems like... You're going to see a lot of differences between Jared Leo and this guy's brother if you watch the document. elementary. Boot just sounds like he is a man with a plan, you know, and some serious logistic skills, like very, very smart.

There's like loads of people who say that he's like pretty much just a business genius, right? He knows all of these languages. He just knows how to get all of these dense company sheets on the books and like, yeah, I mean, that unravels in a bit, but it's probably first worth going back to the global arms trade,

which is probably one of the shadiest industries on earth, as you might imagine. So first, the global defense market, which is basically everything including planes, that's worth 1.6 trillion. So that's almost an apple. Arms is small weapons and munitions. That's worth 95 billion. That's in 2017. The industry's now worth the most since the end of the Cold War, by the way, which is totally cool and fine. How much do you reckon the illegal market's worth, by the way? I mean, billions, like 15, 20, something like that. Yeah, now apparently one.

Like just one billion. I mean, I'm not even sure I believe that. That's crazy, right? Yeah, that sounds way lower than I expected. This is when we should be like sounding the claxon for people who come and like fact check. I miss fact checkers. God. Spute was definitely a really rich guy and we're going to get into wine a bit.

But the idea these illegal gun runners are like massive oligarchs is basically untrue. By the way, one thing I learned, like this is. is really interesting. The AK-47, the world's most common gun. How many of them do you think there are in the world right now? I think actually a lot, because I think that they talked about that in the movie or I've seen numbers that, that, you know, it's way more, way more than there should be. Well, you'll be surprised to hear. It's 200 million. So there's one for every 35th person on earth. Today, AKs are so cheap between 75 and 150 bucks. Arm's dealers, they can't really make any money off them. The margins are too thin.

So they just throw them into sales for free, use them as promos, lost leaders. Anyway, arms dealing is definitely not an illegal industry. Sellers need something called an end user certificate, which is basically just a piece of paper proving the guy they're selling to is legit and not on some terror

or sanctions lists. Fulging these things seems pretty easy, by all accounts. Richard Chachikli, who is this Syrian-American associate of boot from their times in Charger, he said that getting around sanctions is, quote, easier than buying a hamburger at McDonald's.

That's like one of those chef's kiss quotes, I guess, the writer got. So in the earlier days, Boot comes off a bit of a noob when it comes to the weapons themselves and he relies on a bunch of old pals to help him out in the former Soviet Union. But it was this brilliant man management, and he

knew logistics really well. It was a businessman, basically. In his early days, Boot was shipping everything. Food to mining camps, flowers to South Africa. furniture into the former Soviet Union. He sent crayfish to Europe, transported UN peacekeepers to East Timor.

He even ferried soldiers to the U.S.-led operation in Somalia in 93. A colleague told a reporter that, quote, that was all the staple stuff. The dodgy flights were all extras. So he's basically a shipping transport magnet at first, which is how a lot of these guys get started.

It's smuggling goods, it's procuring things, it's shipping things, it's logistics. Like a lot of kingpins get started as logistics guys And you know, the murdering too, I think helps But my question is, Why do you decide to attract attention with trafficking arms? Like if you're going to go illegal, Why not cocaine?

Which seems like it's much more profitable. Well, he seems to have like a bit of an issue with drugs. Like, again, a lot of the stuff about his career is pretty cloudy. But as we'll find out when he kind of gets his comeuppance, he has an issue with drugs throughout his career. I think he just went for the margins, man. And he was transporting these rare gladioli from South Africa into Europe or something, like these rare flowers.

And he kind of like every time he went to somewhere, he just saw an opportunity and just started shipping tons of stuff the other way. Because like, I guess he just pretty much had a monopoly on these old Soviet planes. And he just quickly became like the world's leading supplier of any old shit anyone wants, pretty much. And that's going to become guns. So yeah, his planes are like these chameleons too, right? He changes their call numbers. He changes their colours to avoid authorities.

He used Liberian registration a lot for his connections with Charles Taylor, the leader and warlord. And I actually went through this guy in the very small British seaside town of Wittsable who could switch out boots registration plates in hours way ahead of the feds with like little more than a phone call. Shout out for Wistible, by the way, that's near where I grew up. it was just like gangsters pretty much switching car plates just on this giant scale and it worked really, really well.

So anyway, back to Afghanistan. Boots first known weapon drops were there in 92 where he tooled up the Northern Alliance fighting the Taliban. But there's this big moment in 1995 where that kind of changes everything for Boot and he actually sort of puts him on a collision course with cops that lasts over a decade. That year, one of Boots' planes is down by a Taliban fighter jet

near Kandahar while it was shipping 30 tons of weapons for Albania. Its seven-man Russian crew is held hostage by Taliban soldiers. It becomes this huge international incident. A US congressman even steps in to try and negotiate, but he fails. Boot goes into bat for these guys, and he even meets with Mueller Omar, the Taliban leader. Then almost a year the guys escape in like this comically Hollywood way. The militants let them carry out maintenance on the plane every two months to keep it in shape. But one time, three of them out of six go off to prey, and the crew overpowers the other three and tie them up on the plane.

Then the captain basically jump-starts one of the engines with a battery, fires up the others, and takes off past all these speeding Taliban lorries towards the UAE. It's this crazy story. It obviously makes headlines everywhere. There's even a 2010 Russian movie with a bunch of stars in it, like the Russian Captain Phillips, only probably better. Bonjour, compadre. It's the price line negotiator. How do I negotiate so many great travel deal? My Greatest Gadget.

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They get their race day fit and you get a payout for trying. Someone on Dpop wants what you've got. Start selling now. Dpop, where Taste recognizes taste. Yeah, this is amazing. This is one of the craziest stories I've ever heard. I can't believe I hadn't heard of it before. Yeah, I know. I couldn't believe that I'd never heard of it before researching this thing. It's like it's insanely Hollywood style.

I mean, the things you learn on the Underworld podcast, it's just... I know, right. So we're true lecturers here. Yeah. So, Booth's rolling this isn't really exposed back then. I was actually looking at all the kind of paper clippings and he's not even mentioned once, but he runs the plane, right? And it's highly rumored that alongside all the negotiations that he's doing, He agrees on the side to supply weapons to the Taliban through Omar, always the businessman, this guy. The Taliban is thought to have paid boot over 50 million bucks during its time in power, by the way, and that's going to fuck him up down the line.

But not yet. Throughout the 90s, Boot just builds this giant behemoth of shipping firms. He's got offices in... All right, this is a big list. Angola, Belgium, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Texas, Congo, Uganda, Ivory Coast. Cyprus, Rwanda, Gambia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, South. Africa, Kazakhstan, Moldova, the UAE, and nobody knows who he is. And there's way more, by the way. There are no photos. He leases planes through friends and randoms and he never puts his

signature on anything ever. You find one company, it shuts down. Another one pops up. He's a total apparition and the authority is just pretty much giving up on Britain. He's a total apparition and the authorities just pretty much give up on bringing him to justice. The laws are pretty weak anyway, right? So they're made that way to protect countries who want to tool like rebels and whoever. I like how, you know, he's in every shady place in the world and then Texas. Like that's the place he chooses to be in the U.S. Yeah, and I think that's Syrian American guy that I mentioned earlier that I'm going

to try and not to butcher his name. He's from Texas as well. So a lot goes down around there. I kind of like, too, how he does the exact opposite of posting photos of himself on Instagram, you know, pointing rifles at the camera and holding up stacks of $100 bills. He just kind of, you know, stays out of the limel. not in the magazines, none. And it's probably why he didn't get caught.

Well, I mean, if he was in today, I wonder whether he would have been some kind of weird arms dealer influencer because he was basically a bit of a tourist. I'll get into that in a second, but yeah, for now, he's pretty much untouchable, right? So boot planes get Seseko out of Congo, like I said. They arm rebels in some of the craziest wars,

Sierra Leone, Liberia, all over. He ships British troops into Kosovo, a-to-sunami victims, American into Iraq. By all accounts, Boot doesn't think he's doing anything wrong at all. So later he tells a reporter, quote, Why should I be afraid in my life? I did not do anything that I should be concerned about.

And this is kind of one of the lessons of Boot's story, the uncomfortable truth. Ultimately, we're kind of fine with the idea of good or evil, but he's basically amoral. He's just doing business and that's what the system's all about. We set it up so that people can make money and we hope they'll more or less choose to do the right thing. There's this amazing documentary in 2015 called A Notorious Mr. Boot

and it's just all his home videos, right? The guy was obsessed with recording things throughout his life. He wasn't publishing him, but he was like always on his camera. It just comes off as this like fat Pollyanna, taking tourist picks in Congo, getting pissed on vodka with his arms dealer friends in Russia. He's devoted to his family, loves his business.

It's not really the portrait the cops want and everyone should watch it actually to learn more about him. It's a fantastic film. How did the filmmakers get the videos? Was this something that was released to the court? Like, how did they go into that at all? Yeah, this, I think it was a Russian filmmaker. And he, when Boot was getting screwed, like, by the feds,

I think he went to Aller's home in Moscow. And she showed him into a backroom and there's just piles and piles of old VHSs and stuff like this. And she's like, oh, I never even thought it was interesting. And then this film is like, it's all stitched together. It's a Storyville documentary. like the BBC stuff, so you know it's like really, really good. Yeah, everyone should watch that and watch Lord of the War and like see how this guy is

portrayed in different lights. So Moscow businessman Mikhail Belazerski, who was a friend of Boots, told a reporter that, quote, I would think a person who brings death to people should look somewhat different from ordinary people. However, there was nothing in the kind of victor. That's always the case, though. I mean, that's the whole banality of evil thing, right? Yeah. I mean like, but with this guy, I think it's even more so, right? He just looks like, I mean, he just looks like a salary man. Like he doesn't look like anything more than just like a overweight office worker.

Dude, think of another amazing Nicholas Cage movie, nine millimeter, right? There's that scene where he's investing in the guys who make snuff videos and he finds the one guy and he catches him and he's about to kill him and he takes off his like balaclaba that he's wearing and the guy and he's like surprised

to see he looks like a normal guy and the guy's just like, what did you expect? Yeah, totally. But that movie rules. I mean, every Nicholas Cage movie rules there's like not a single bad one. I take that back. There was one last year I watched.

It was fucking terrible. I tried to watch the national treasure one. I couldn't. I had to turn it off. Oh man. I can watch anything with him in it. Like seriously, absolutely anything. It's the best actor on the planet. But anyway, like boot, ship guns to governments, rebels, whomever, like, it was just business for him. So whatever, so what separates him from our governments, really, right? So I'm in Germany. It's approved about a billion dollars of weapons to Saudi Arabia, which is bombing Yemen into extinction. 2017 Trump signed that $110 billion with the Saudi king.

Governments literally just justify this in economic terms. It's just business for them. So who's the bad guy? And like, as a good example, Iran-Contra literally happened because the US funneled weapons to Iran via middleman just like boot, actually just like him. We're going to get into that in a bit. And it happens all the time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just take it easy IOC. We're making a crime podcast. Yeah, so it got all political for a second. I'm going to calm down. Yeah, rant over. But authorities became fixated on boot as this kind of international bogeyman.

By 1999, he's a millionaire running 30 planes and about 300 staff, and he's fueling all of these bloody conflicts around the world. One official says, quote, on their best days, other arms dealers couldn't influence a war either way. They were peanuts. Boot could make or break a country.

To be fair, he definitely gets the fact he's shipping all this blood around. And he tells a journalist he knows that if he pipes up about who he deals with, he'll get, quote, the red hole right here. He points that his forehead, by the way. The British Foreign Minister coins him as the merchant of death in 2000. Top-narch nickname. It's great. They know exactly what they're doing there.

And then 9-11 happens and all bets are off. It's all axes of evil, black versus white, that kind of stuff. By this time, Boot has moved from Sharja, and he's living in the gated community in Johannesburg with Alan and a young daughter. They become friends with this British. former military pilot called Andrew Smullian. Remember his name, by the way, because it's going to come up big time later on.

How could you forget a name like that? How can you pronounce it? Smulian. Smulian. Smol's. Oh, Smooley. Small dog. So here's where the hunt for Victor Boot really begins, right? In 2002, Belgian officials issued arrest warrant, accusing Boot of laundering over 300 million,

but he moves to Moscow and he allegedly gets shelter from some higher upstairs. Yeah, he's also neighbors with Semyon Mogilevich, who's this Ukrainian who's one of the world's biggest gangsters. I've seen him described as the head of the Russian mafia, which, you know, the most powerful gangster in the world, things like that, which all sound a bit hyperbolic. I don't think there is a quote-unquote head of the Russian mafia.

But he's definitely extremely powerful and super well-connected around the world. And again, we talk about him in the Brighton Beach episodes that are coming up. Yeah, he's a real, real kingpin. Either way, yeah. There's also this really weird moment that year when MI6 plans a sting in Athens but Bouts tipped off at the last minute and the Brits blame the CIA for letting him get away

and it's a pretty credible like claim as well. They say that only one other intelligence authority knew about the sting and that was a CIA and I guess that's referenced in Lord of War right? There's some stuff towards the end that kind of like gets into this. Maybe that's cause US officials

realized that boots helping them too. His tentacles are basically everywhere at this point. He's running guns. into Iraq for American troops, oil-filled stuff for Halliburton. And those flights carry on until 2005, right? So, whoops, not good PR. He's embarrassed the Americans by this point, and that rarely goes down well.

And then he's going to come out of hiding. So in 2003, when the US is going to all world police and the world and Washington sanctions 30 of his companies for doing business with the Taliban. They link it with al-Qaeda. They raid his mate Chachalee's house in Texas and they find bank records a copy of Boots passport, one of them.

And over 200,000 bucks worth of diamonds. Chichakley flees to Russia after that and Boot just keeps on selling shit. He even spouts off in Moscow about how he's totally innocent and it's all an anti-Russian conspiracy. A bunch of journalists do features on him, including in New York Times, which does a photo shoot of Boot

looking like some sort of two-bit wise guy pulling shapes on an armchair. Reminds me, there's this old footage of Mogilevich playing chess of the reporter on a roof, like both them just standing there in the middle of nowhere. I think it's a BBC documentary, but that's just good TV. I mean, I've got a lot of respect

for the photographers who are getting these guys to pull these shapes, because it's pretty nuts. You should check out some of the pictures, actually. I've got it in the reading list that we're going to publish. But then Lord of War comes out, and then suddenly a guy who barely added any photos of him, is public enemy number two behind Osama bin Laden. All right, so it's 2007 now,

and we're into the plot to bring down Victor Boot. But first we're going to back up the previous year when a DEA unit posing as members of the Colombian rebel group at FARC, broker the phony deal with Syrian arms dealer Monceir Al-Khasa in Madrid. He was actually the guy involved in Iran-Contra, by the way. So he had his use and now they kind of wanted him out of the way, the authorities. So the DEA thinks, all right, if we got Casa,

why not just do exactly the same with Boot? And they do exactly the same. They need a way to lure him out of Moscow where he's supposedly being protected by people in Putin's regime, you think the so-called merchant had to be a bit wary of some, like if some massive drug smugglers being stung in a DEA operation, right? Well, remember what I said about Boop being this kind of dumpy, ingenue, tourist, come arms dealer guy?

There's a great moment in that documentary I mentioned before where they basically say he was just like so used to success. He just walked straight into all this. He never thought you'd get done ever. Overconfidence, man. It brings many people like, that down. You know, they slip up once and it's the end. It's kind of why I'll never make it. You know, you get, things go right for a while. You get lazy. You stop doing things that you're

supposed to do to be careful. And it's just a common story. Yeah, I mean, that's why I'm going to be a great journalist because, I mean, I'll get turned down for like a thousand pitches for everyone that gets through. So that's a good sign, right? That's a really good sign. Lack of confidence. Or skill. Yeah. So the DEA searches around for a weak link in Boots network of associates and they find Andrew Smooley and his old pal from Johannesburg. Smools. Smools. Smalls. Small dogs. Yeah, he's washed up and he's working at a hypodermic needle factory in Tanzania. That's not a good CV. No. He says he's in, in his words, he's broker them broke. So that's therein. D.E.A. gets a Congo based asset, a businessman called

Mike Snow to contact Boot about a deal for, quote, agricultural stuff. Never trust a guy named Mike snow. I mean, come on. Wasn't there a bank called Mike Snow? I think that's a Congolese businessman. I don't know. I think it had two eyes and it was kind of like spelled, it was, you know, something Scandinavian and it was like MECA or something like that. All right, okay. So that wasn't a DEA asset.

Or maybe they were, I don't know. Who knows? So Smulian flies to a Hilton Hotel Tiki bar and Kurichau in the Caribbean. Nice gig for that guy, right? So, like, how much do these DEA agents have to spend on these things? They're setting some two-bit needle salesman to curichow. But when he's there, Smolian meets two guys there who say they're FARC. Actually, they're both convicted drug smugglers.

The DEA has turned into assets. They tell Smulian they want Russian-made iglas, which are these shoulder fire, surface-to-air missiles, which are banned. Smulian said he knows a, quote, top dog in Moscow, who is, quote, again, protected at the very top. I mean, look, these guys are horrible people doing horrible things, but this does sound kind of fun. You know, like shady meetings in a fancy hotel teaky bar in the Caribbean. Like, I want in on that. Yeah, I mean, what bad things could ever happen at a teaky bar?

Sounds like a great place to do an arm's deal. They're kind of ruining the spirit of teaky bars, though. You know, you can't, I'm with you on that. Nothing bad should be discussed at a teaky bar. Only positivity. This is the only bad thing that's ever happened at a teaky bar ever. I mean, Tiki Torches kind of had, you know, a bit of a, their brand kind of got ruined for a bit, but that's another story. People can bring them back. They can be reappropriated. According to Boots' defense,

he's skeptical of these guys, but ever the businessman, he reckons he could sneak through some sales of old cargo planes under the veil of the arms deal. So he agrees until Smulian, he can get the iglers from Ukraine, which is like basically the fort knocks of arms.

It's just like packed full of them. It still is. I think it's like the world's biggest place for illegal arms deals. Just like with Alcasa, the DEA tries luring boot to Romania because that country lets you tap wire. right but just like al-casa but refuses so he's past step one eventually they decided to meet in

Bangkok whoops and on march 5th 2008 boot gets on a plane for thailand the next day he meets with smulian and the two supposed militants in a hotel conference room boots switching between spanish and english and he's even bold enough to write down all of the armed stuff on a notepad this stuff's all on video by the way it looks like so hammy it's incredible he fell for it anyway after a while while all these Thai agents burst in and Boot just sits there looking calm as hell. He turns to the DE officer in the room and just goes, the game is over. Great. I mean, great last line.

But it kind of sounds like he was expecting to get caught. You know, if I was his jailhouse therapist, I'd be all. Victor, do you think maybe subconsciously you wanted to get caught, you know? Yeah, I mean, maybe he had a therapist in Thai jail. I think everyone in Thai jail gets a therapist, right? I'm just saying in general, like at this point, maybe he's tired of running. I'm just going to psychoanalyze him right here. Like he wants to get caught at this point.

I think, yeah, I mean, that documentary just says that he's so blithe and, like, confident that he just doesn't even realize. But, I mean, if you didn't realize you're going to get caught, would you just sit there quoting one-liners? Maybe not. I don't know. Mr. Bond, I see the game is over. I don't know what accent that was.

That's just how I imagine he talks. I think that was your accent. It wasn't it? Yeah. So there's bootnab, and he spends nine months in a Thai prison protesting his innocence. He also learns Sanskrit, Hindi, and Persian. I just get the fuck out of here at this point. Like, lock this guy up for just making us all,

everyone who tried to learn a language during quarantine, like just making us off like assholes. I can get a coffee in German. That's pretty good, right? By the way, he doesn't learn Thai, because he doesn't want people to, like, think that he can understand what he's saying. Like, it's pretty switched on. He just wants people to think of him as a foreigner.

So he learns three other languages instead, standard. So when he goes to court for extradition to the US, there are guys flogging copies of Lord of War outside the courtroom. It's really bizarre. Anyway, 2012, Boot is convicted in the US court. Because the two guys were posing this FARC, which America says is a terror outfit, he gets done on four counts, right?

Conspiring to kill American citizens, conspiring to kill American soldiers, conspiring to acquire anti-aircraft missiles, and conspiring to provide material to terrorists. I mean, it's pretty weak, right? Like, he wasn't conspiring to kill Americans. He's just selling weapons. And the guys weren't actually in the FARC.

Like, it's pretty entrapmenty. What are so-called legit arms dealers doing anyway, like conspiring to kill Yemenis? I think at this point it's safe to say that Sean supports illegal gun running and terrorism and also hates America. Yeah, all right, that's on record, yeah. Sure, that's never going to come back. Even the judge, right, so I'm going to side with the judge. So the judge is on my side here.

And she sentences Boot for the minimum 25 years and she says, quote, but for the approach made through this determined sting operation, there is no reason to believe Boot would have ever committed the charged crimes. So that's a bit of a spiky quote at the end of the court case. And outside the court, Aller has a better quote. the man they sent down wasn't her husband she says adding quote they just found nicholas cage guilty i mean that's another solid quote but you know i know you said otherwise but except for some biographical details he really does sound a lot like the character in the movie yeah i mean watch the movie guys it's a good movie i mean it's a fucking good movie they should be paying us to advertise jesus man we could be raking in the dough yeah i mean we will we will i mean nicholas cage is guilty of nothing, of course, but being the best actor in the world. But there it is, right? The merchant

of death blew it into a sting and spending his days in an American prison. It didn't do much to the arms industry, by the way. Prices stayed about the same and weapons are still as freely available as they've ever been. In fact, some think Boots' high-profile case actually helped advertise the illegal arms trade around the world. It was probably more to do with the agency guys battling for cred. And someone says here, the way you rise in that particular system is through high-profile cases. That's one guy is telling the documentary director. And he adds, and Victor was high-profile. Whether he was deserving of that high-profile was another question. At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light, and I was transported to

another place. Pluto TV. Then I heard a voice. Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows, and they were all free. The truth is our city. It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe Arrow, the 100 NX files may cause excitement, loss of sleep, and sudden belief in extraterrestrials. No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never.

Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. So, there's Victor Boot. Was he an evil guy with blood in his hands, a patsy for the feds,

or just a guy without a conscience doing stuff that governments do every day? I don't know, man. I mean, it kind of sounds like he did a lot of bad things that I guess governments do as well. But, you know, he probably should have been arrested. What happened to his brother? So, I mean, I think his brother got off. And, like, the weirder one is that this Chachakli guy, the Syrian American, he now does a load of like speaking on how Boot and him are innocent of doing anything bad.

He has like a YouTube channel where he has all of these like weird interviews where he's just like he's turned into like a grifter basically online. And he has like one interview from years ago where he's sitting down with Boot on some kind of like crappy 90s sofa. And he's talking about how they're going to get all these trumped up charges. It's just before he gets stung. I can't remember exactly what he says now, but it's basically something like, I mean, like the Americans are after me. It's all a conspiracy,

but it's like, he's a weird guy. And he pops up in loads of stories about Boo as well. The last refuge of the damned YouTube channels. We should get him on, man. We should do a little, you know. Yeah, he's booked. He's booked. Yeah, I'm getting him.

Yeah, so that's, that's Boot. I mean, he's incredibly interesting guy. And like, if you want to learn more, like, we're going to have the reading list, obviously, that goes up with our Patreon stuff. But I mean, the sort of difference in the way that he's portrayed in the media is incredible.

Like, he's either evil or an idiot and pretty much nothing in between. So you can make him mind up. He's definitely not an idiot. I mean, the guy learned Sanskrit. Like, no matter what you say about someone, if they learn Sanskrit, they're not an idiot. That's true.

But yeah, I think that about does it. I want to thank, as always, our audio producer, Dale Isinger. Who makes us sound halfway decent when we sound zero ways decent most of the time recording this. So thanks to Dale for that. And thanks to everyone who's supporting us, who's listening, subscribe, Patreon, all that good stuff. And thanks again for tuning in. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile.

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