Viktor Bout

History's Biggest Villains

Viktor Anatolyevich Bout ( born January, 13th 1967) is a Russian arms dealer. An entrepreneur and former Soviet military translator, he used his multiple companies to smuggle weapons since the collapse of the Soviet Union from Eastern Europe to Africa and the Middle East during the 1990s and early 2000s. Bout gained the nicknames the Merchant of Death and Sanctions Buster after Peter Hain of the British Foreign Office read a report to the United Nations in 2003 on Bout's wide-reaching operations, extensive clientele, and willingness to bypass embargoes. In a U.S. sting operation, Bout was arrested on 6 March 2008 in Thailand on terrorism charges by the Royal Thai Police in cooperation with American authorities and Interpol. The U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Eric G. John requested his extradition under the Extradition Act with Thailand, which was eventually mandated by the Thai High Court in August 2010. Bout was accused of intending to sell arms to a U.S. DEA informer pretending to represent the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) for use against U.S. forces in Colombia, but denied the charges and predicted an acquittal. On 2 November 2011, Bout was convicted by a jury in a Manhattan federal court of conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens and officials, delivery of anti-aircraft missiles, and providing aid to a terrorist organization, and was sentenced to a minimum of 25 years imprisonment because the crime was due to the sting operation. From June 2012 until December 2022, Bout was held at the United States Penitentiary, Marion, before being released in a prisoner exchange for U.S. basketball player Brittney Griner, who was arrested in February 2022 at a Moscow airport for smuggling vaporizer cartridges containing under a gram of hashish oil which is illegal in Russia.

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