Viktor Bout is a larger-than-life figure on the African stage, where he has for close on two decades been a well-known figure in Africa's hotspots and at one stage lived in Sandhurst, Johannesburg.His airlines were regular visitors to South African airports, notably the more porous Lanseria and Polokwane airports.An airline linked to Bout's business empire made news when it was revealed it had arrived in the dead of night at the Waterkloof military base and whisked away Khalid Rashid, the Pakistani whose controversial "deportation" resembling a rendition rocked the South African government. Bout has known a variety of African heads of state and rebel leaders across the continent and the world.These include the Afghan northern forces leader Ahmed Shah Massoud; former Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, whom Bout claims to have whisked to safety; now deceased Angolan Unita leader Jonas Savimbi; the notorious Charles Taylor of Liberia; Congolese opposition leaders; and, closer to home, the Swazi royal house.He admitted in a rare interview his clients included two notorious arms dealers, Alexander Islamov and Leonid Minin.But Bout has also flown UN peacekeepers to East Timor and Somalia and claims he flew in French troops during the Rwandan genocide. Bout was reliably reported to have been flying to Iraq for both private contractors and the US military.The extremely private Bout, a linguist fluent in half a dozen languages, was university-educated in Moscow but as part of the Soviet air force found himself in Mozambique during the dying days of the Soviet empire. His aviation empire then began with the purchase of a few ageing Antonovs, allegedly funded by illicit sales of abandoned Soviet weaponry.
Arms traffickers inherited the Soviet Cold War weapons supply along with clandestine routes of transport and finance, which Bout is said to have used to good effect.
The trade involves falsified end-user certificates, bribes, swapped cargos, ever-changing tail numbers on planes and big, big rewards whether in cash or diamonds.
Bout soon set up an aviation base in Sharjah, an airport of convenience in the United Arab Emirates, where he paired up with the founder of Sharjah's free-trade zone, Richard Chichakli, said to be a nephew of top Syrian politicians of yesteryear.
Sharjah, which stands at the crossroads of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, has continued to be the centre of Bout's empire, albeit via a bewildering network of companies and airline outfits run by alleged surrogates.When he came under scrutiny from Belgian authorities in 1996, Bout moved from that country to South Africa where he lived in style for a few years.
Bout's Liberian-registered company, Air Cess, moved from Belgium and then entered a joint venture with a South African freight company called Norse Air.
A new company called Pietersburg Aviation Services and Systems (Pty) Ltd was set up in 1997 and operated under the name Air Pass.One of the directors was Valerii Naido, who after leaving South Africa ended up being listed by the US along with Chichakli for his alleged Bout connections.
Although Bout stopped operating directly in South Africa at the end of the 1990s, the US-based Centre for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists claimed he continued to operate in southern Africa via surrogates who included smaller Russian operators.
However, South African authorities closed in on Bout and accused him of breaching civil aviation law as well as busting UN sanctions by sending supplies to Unita in Angola.He had meanwhile registered a number of aircraft in neighbouring Swaziland and registered more airlines in other African countries.These listed companies include three Bout outfits that were targeted by South African authorities in the late 1990s - the apparently defunct Pietersburg Aviation Services and Systems (Pty) Ltd, Cess Air and Air Pass.
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