After deftly evading the grasp of law enforcement agencies for more than a decade, the world’s most notorious arms trafficker made a reckless mistake.
Viktor Bout risked venturing outside of Russia, the one place where his close ties to high-ranking government and military officials offered him tacit protection, the one place where he could feel safe from arrest and extradition.
On March 5, 2008, Bout flew from Moscow to Bangkok to meet with representatives of a Colombian guerilla group seeking to overthrow the country’s democratically elected government. Bout came to finalize a lucrative deal to deliver millions of dollars of military-grade weapons from Eastern European warehouses to jungle outposts in Colombia.