Tomislav Damnjanovic is a Serbian businessman and arms smuggler. A former employee of Yugoslavia's national airline, Damnjanovic founded his own company transporting supplies aboard an Ilyushin Il-76 freight carrier. With increasing United Nations sanctions on Yugoslavian airlines, he began to expand his operations into illegal smuggling. [1] [2] He attained notoriety in 2002 when he was contracted to deliver "millions of rounds of ammunition, guns, grenades and mortars" to aid the US military during the ongoing War In Iraq and War in Afghanistan. At the time, United Nations officials investigating his previous activities discovered a 15 year history of weapons deals with Libyan, Liberian, Republic of the Congo officials as well as Al Qaeda-linked Islamist groups in Somalia and other smuggling deals backed Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. [1] The United Nations claimed that in 2006, 45 tons of supplies were sold to the Islamic Courts Union at the same time as Damnjanovic was contracted to supply US forces. [1] [2]
Though the investigation is still ongoing, its revelations called into question the United States's efforts to track smugglers, and the "profiling system" used to check the backgrounds of potential arms dealers. [1] In 2007, a United Nations case study on Damnjanovic referred to him as an "invisible arms trafficker", claiming that he "worked outside the law. transporting weapons for US companies and weapons manufacturers based in America while at the same time using chartered flights in Africa and the Middle East in illegal operations to supply, among others, Saddam Hussein, Charles Taylor, the Burma military junta, Muammar Gaddafi and Islamic militants in Mogadishu. Damnjanovic was linked to other arms dealers such as Victor Bout too. [2]
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Arms trafficking or gunrunning is the illicit trade of contraband small arms and ammunition, which constitutes part of a broad range of illegal activities often associated with transnational criminal organizations. The illegal trade of small arms, unlike other organized crime commodities, is more closely associated with exercising power in communities instead of achieving economic gain. Scholars estimate illegal arms transactions amount to over US$1 billion annually.
Viktor Anatolyevich Bout is a Russian arms dealer. An entrepreneur and former Soviet military translator, he used his multiple air transport 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.
Silk Way Airlines is an Azerbaijani private cargo airline with its head office and flight operations at Heydar Aliyev International Airport in Baku. It operates freight services to Asia, the Middle East and Europe, as well as services for government and non-governmental organisations. The airline is part of the Silk Way Group.
Aerocom was an airline based in Chişinău, Moldova. It was suspected to be involved in illegal weapons trade, which ultimately led to the airline being shut down in 2004.
The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been accused of involvement in drug trafficking. Books and investigations on the subject that have received general notice include works by the historian Alfred McCoy, professor and diplomat Peter Dale Scott, journalists Gary Webb and Alexander Cockburn, and writer Larry Collins. These claims have led to investigations by the United States government, including hearings and reports by the United States House of Representatives, Senate, Department of Justice, and the CIA's Office of the Inspector General.
Juan Ramón Matta-Ballesteros is a Honduran former major narcotics trafficker who has been credited with being one of the first to connect Mexican drug traffickers with the Colombian cocaine cartels. This connection paved the way for a major increase in the amount of cocaine smuggled into the United States during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. Matta was indicted for operating several major cocaine smuggling rings in United States in the early 1980s. He was also one of the narcotics traffickers accused of the kidnap and murder of American DEA agent Enrique Camarena in 1985.
A number of writers have alleged that the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved in the Nicaraguan Contras' cocaine trafficking operations during the 1980s Nicaraguan civil war. These claims have led to investigations by the United States government, including hearings and reports by the United States House of Representatives, Senate, Department of Justice, and the CIA's Office of the Inspector General which ultimately concluded the allegations were unsupported. The subject remains controversial.
Southern Air Transport (SAT) (1947–1998), based in Miami, Florida, was a cargo airline best known as a front company for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) (1960–1973) and for its crucial role in the Iran-Contra scandal in the mid-1980s. During the affair, Southern Air transported arms to Iran and to the US-backed stateless mercenary army in Central America known as the Contras, which were fighting the revolutionary Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
Kathi Lynn Austin is an expert on arms trafficking, peace and security, and human rights. She has investigated the illegal trade in weapons, illicit trafficking operations, illegal resource exploitation and terrorism for over 20 years, and has documented conflicts in Africa, Latin America, East and Central Europe, and South Asia.
This article deals with activities of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency related to transnational crime, including the illicit drug trade.
Efraim Diveroli is an American former arms dealer and author. His company, AEY Inc., was a major weapons contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense. The U.S. government suspended AEY for violating its contract after AEY provided Chinese ammunition and attempted to hide the origins by repackaging it as being from Hungary, thus violating the American arms embargo against China. As a result of the publicity surrounding the contract and the age of the arms dealers – Diveroli was 21 and partner David Packouz was 25 when AEY landed the ammunition deal – the United States Army began a review of its contracting procedures.
CIA activities in Nicaragua have been ongoing since the 1980s. The increasing influence gained by the Sandinista National Liberation Front, a left-wing and anti-imperialist political party in Nicaragua, led to a sharp decrease in Nicaragua–United States relations, particularly after the Nicaraguan Revolution. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to support the Contras, a right-wing Nicaraguan political group to combat the influence held by the Sandinistas in the Nicaraguan government. Various anti-government rebels in Nicaragua were organized into the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, the first Contra group, at the behest of the CIA. The CIA also supplied the Contras with training and equipment, including materials related to torture and assassination. There have also been allegations that the CIA engaged in drug trafficking in Nicaragua.
Israel's role in the Iran–Iraq War consisted of support provided by Israel to Iran during the Iran–Iraq War from 1980 to 1988. During the war, Israel was one of the main suppliers of military equipment to Iran. Israel also provided military instructors during the war and direct support to Iran's war effort, when it bombed and destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, during Operation Opera. The nuclear reactor was a central component of Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
Leonid Efimovich Minin is an international arms trafficker. He was arrested on August 4, 2000 by Italian authorities in Cinisello Balsamo near Milan. Minin had been under surveillance since 1992 for his suspected illegal arms dealings, mostly to West African nations. He was sentenced to two years in prison in Italy.
Since the establishment of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps the organization has been involved in economic and military activities, some of them controversial.
Mexicans have a right to own firearms, but legal purchase from the single Mexican gun shop in Mexico City, controlled by the Army, is extremely difficult. Guns smuggled into Mexico are sometimes obtained at gunshops in the United States and carried across the US-Mexico border. In other cases the guns are obtained through Guatemalan borders or stolen from the police or military. Consequently, black market firearms are widely available. Many firearms are acquired in the U.S. by women with no criminal history, who transfer their purchases to smugglers through relatives, boyfriends and acquaintances who then smuggle them to Mexico a few at a time. The most common smuggled firearms include AR-15 and AK-47 type rifles, and FN 5.7 caliber semi-automatic pistols. Many firearms are purchased in the United States in a semi-automatic configuration before being converted to fire as select fire machine guns. Mexico seized in 2009 a combined total of more than 4,400 firearms of the AK-47 and AR-15 type, and 30% of AK-47 type semi-automatic rifles seized have been modified as select fire weapons.
Richard John Brenneke was a US businessman who testified in 1988 that he had worked in Southeast Asia with the Central Intelligence Agency's Air America, among other roles.
Timber Sycamore was a classified weapons supply and training program run by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and supported by some Arab intelligence services, including Saudi intelligence. Launched in 2012 or 2013, it supplied money, weaponry and training to rebel forces fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war. According to US officials, the program was run by the CIA's Special Activities Division and has trained thousands of rebels. President Barack Obama secretly authorized the CIA to begin arming Syria's embattled rebels in 2013. The program became public knowledge in mid-2016.
Foreign support in the Bosnian War included the funding, training or military support by foreign states and organizations outside Yugoslavia to any of the belligerents in the Bosnian War (1992–95).
Amir Hossein Ardebili is an Iranian businessman and convicted arms dealer.