Who Is 'The Merchant Of Death' Viktor Bout? All You Need To Know About His High-Profile Prison Swap and Net Worth

In 2022, US officials released convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, nicknamed the “Merchant of Death”, as part of a prisoner swap deal to free WNBA star Brittney Griner, who was arrested in Russia. Bout, who has a long history of arms trade with the most dangerous people in the world, was arrested in 2008 and the good work of the various agencies was undone after his release.

Here’s everything you need to know about Viktor Bout.

Who Is Viktor Bout?

Known by several nicknames like the "Merchant of Death" and "The Sanctions Buster," Bout was one of the world's most wanted men before his arrest in 2008, as per Forbes. Bout had the unique ability to get around arms embargoes while running his international arms trafficking network.

Bout supplied weapons in some of the most violent conflicts in the world, the wars in Africa and the Balkans in Europe. U.S. prosecutors deemed him "the world's most successful and sophisticated arms trafficker,” as per WSJ.

Bout was conscripted into the Soviet Army when he was 18 years old, according to a New Yorker profile published in 2012. After serving in the infantry brigade in western Ukraine for two years, he applied to the Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow, where he studied Portuguese. As per reports, Bout also worked in the Soviet foreign military intelligence agency.

Bouts' career in shipping started in 1995 when he worked at the cargo hangars at Sharjah International Airport in the United Arab Emirates. He then launched his cargo airline, Air Cess, with a small fleet of Russian planes, delivering goods to Africa and Afghanistan, as per CBS News.

He soon started supplying weapons and helped fuel civil wars by providing sophisticated weapons in conflicts in Sierra Leone and Angola. Bout’s operations came under the radar of the U.S. and British officials, after Peter Hain, the Minister of State for Africa in Britain's Foreign Office, raised an alarm over British soldiers in Africa getting attacked by sophisticated weapons.

It has Hain who gave Bout the nickname the "Merchant of Death" after he read an intelligence briefing on his activities," according to the book "Operation Relentless: The Hunt for the Richest, Deadliest Criminal in History" by Damien Lewis.

Bout’s assets were soon frozen and transactions through American banks were blocked with sanctions issued by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Over several decades, Bout amassed a net worth of a whopping $50 million from his illegal operations and he potentially smuggled billions of dollars worth of weapons from Eastern Europe to different parts of the world.

How Was Viktor Bout Caught?

After Bout came under the radar of the British and U.S. officials, the Drug Enforcement Administration devised a plan to capture Bout in 2007. The DEA planned to lure Bout out of Russia with a too-good-to-be-refused arms deal. Undercover agents were hired to contact a trusted associate of Bout to strike a big business deal, CBS News reported.

A meeting was arranged between the DEA's fake arms buyers, who posed as officials of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, also known as the FARC, and Bout's associate near Colombia. After Bout liked the deal, he was on his way to Thailand to meet with the so-called FARC officials to discuss shipping. Bout promised to supply military-grade weapons to attack American helicopters in Colombia. In the meeting, Bout even said that he could air drop the weapons directly in Columbia.

During the meeting, after recording Bout’s statements, the Thai police and DEA agents burst into the room and arrested him. He was extradited to the U.S. in 2010 and convicted on terrorism charges a year later. He was subsequently sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Why was he released?

Bout was released in a prison swap with WNBA Star Brittney Griner. Griner is a seven-time WNBA All-Star center for the Phoenix Mercury and a two-time Olympic Gold medalist with Team USA. She played for the Russian basketball club UMMC Ekaterinburg during the WNBA’s offseason.

In 2022, she was arrested by the Russian authorities on drug charges, after traces of hashish oil were allegedly found in vape cartridges in her luggage, as per The Skimm. Griner pled guilty and she was sentenced nine years to prison. Following this, the Russian authorities speculated that she could be exchanged for Bout, whose freedom was long being sought by the Kremlin.

Later in the year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, stated that a "substantial proposal" to Russia had been put forward for a prisoner swap. Soon, President Joe Biden signed off on the trade slated to happen in the United Arab Emirates at the Abu Dhabi airport. 

After spending nearly 10 months in custody, Griner was released from the Russian jail in exchange for Bout in a one-for-one prisoner swap on December 8, 2022. The deal marked one of the most high-profile prisoner swaps between Moscow and Washington since the Cold War.

Earlier this year, the Liberal Democratic Party, a nationalist-leaning political bloc that is nominally in opposition to the ruling party in Russia, tapped him to join the party. He was nominated as a candidate for the legislative assembly of the Ulyanovsk region in central Russia and won the seat for the far-right party.