She also ordered him to forfeit $15 million and pay a $400 special assessment fee. * * * In addition to his prison term, Judge Scheindlin sentenced BOUT to five years of supervised released. Smulian cooperated with the Government and, along with the two CSs, provided testimony at the trial. Smulian was charged along with BOUT in March 2008 and pled guilty in July 2008.
AVOWED IN A SENTENCE TRIAL
The evidence presented at trial included a recording of the Mameeting between BOUT, the CSs, his former associate Andrew Smulian, and others.
He also stated that the FARC’s fight against the United States was also his fight and that he had been “fighting the United States…for ten to fifteen years.” During the meeting, he also offered to provide people to train the FARC in the use of the arms. BOUT said that he understood that the CSs wanted the arms to use against American personnel in Colombia, and advised that, “we have the same enemy,” referring to the United States.
He also provided a map of South America and asked the CSs to show him American radar locations in Colombia. During a covertly recorded meeting in Thailand on March 6, 2008, BOUT stated to the CSs that he could arrange to airdrop the arms to the FARC in Colombia, and offered to sell them two cargo planes that could be used for arms deliveries. BOUT agreed to sell the weapons to two confidential sources working with the DEA (the “CSs”), who represented that they were acquiring them for the FARC, with the specific understanding that the weapons were to be used to attack U.S. nationals, and freezes any of his assets that are within the jurisdiction of the United States.īetween November 2007 and March 2008, BOUT agreed to sell millions of dollars’ worth of weapons to the FARC, including 700-800 surface-to-air missiles (“SAMs”), over 20,000 AK-47 firearms, 10 million rounds of ammunition, five tons of C-4 plastic explosives, “ultralight” airplanes outfitted with grenade launchers, and unmanned aerial vehicles.
The designation prohibits any transactions between BOUT and U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control within the Department of Treasury placed him on the Specially Designated Nationals list in 2004. As a result of his weapons trafficking activities in Liberia, the U.S. Today’s sentence is a fitting coda for this career arms trafficker of the most dangerous order.” According to the Indictment and evidence presented at the trial: Since the 1990s, BOUT has been an international weapons trafficker. He was finally brought to justice in an American court for agreeing to provide a staggering number of military grade weapons to an avowed terrorist organization committed to killing Americans. Attorney Preet Bharara said: “Viktor Bout has been international arms trafficking enemy number one for many years, arming some of the most violent conflicts around the globe. On November 2, 2011, BOUT was convicted on all four counts for which he was charged after a three-week jury trial before U.S. BOUT understood that the weapons would be used to kill Americans in Colombia. Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that international arms dealer VIKTOR BOUT was sentenced today to 25 years in prison for conspiring to sell millions of dollars worth of weapons, including hundreds of surface-to-air missiles and over 20,000 AK-47s to the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (the “FARC”), a designated foreign terrorist organization based in Colombia.
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