Arms Broker Arrested, Ringleader Remains At Large

Fund for Peace
Tuesday, 26 February 2002

The arrest in Belgium of international broker Sanvjivan Ruprah may be a major step in crushing an arms smuggling network that has catered to abusive forces in Africa and Afghanistan in defiance of U.N. sanctions, The Fund for Peace said today.

The arms trafficking ringleader Victor Bout, a former KGB official, continues to remain at large, despite numerous U.N. investigation that between 1996 and 2002 have exposed his sanction-busting operations. Through its connection with former Warsaw Pact arms suppliers and a web of air transport companies, Bout reportedly catered arms to the Taliban regime, and to embargoed forces in Angola, Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo, and Afghanistan. Originally operating out of Ostend, Belgium, Bout relocated his activities in the United Arab Emirates from where he conducted business undisturbed.

"The United Arab Emirates' mantra has been that they had no hard proof of Bout's illegal activities. But they are hiding behind a finger," said Loretta Bondi', advocacy director of The Fund for Peace. "At the very least, the UAE should account for the trafficker's whereabouts, continued Bondi' who is an expert on U.N. targeted sanctions and has urged NATO to restrain the flow of arms cascading from Eastern European countries of the NATO Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. She added that "For its part, the U.N. needs to fully explain why Flying Dolphin, an air company in which Bout had an interest, obtained a U.N. waiver for flights between Dubai and the Kandahar in Afghanistan." The Fund for Peace has been active in exposing the activities of international arms brokers such as Bout and in advocating stronger controls. The organization, a non-profit based in Washington D.C., also wrote a model treaty on arms brokering that was presented last July at U.N. Conference on the Illicit Trafficking in Small Arms and Lights Weapons in All Its Aspects.

"We also dissected the 1996 U.S. law on brokering, one of the best in the world, and found out that it has never been enforced," observed Bondi' noting that only eleven countries have adopted statutes on this aspect of the arms pipelines. Bondi' pointed out that one of Bout's companies, Air Cess, was based in Miami. "The 1996 U.S. statute may apply to Bout, but we have no information of any specific investigation that may lead to his prosecution under this law," she concluded.

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