Kommersant, Russia
March 17 2005
United States Intercepts Russian Missiles
// Arms smuggling
A huge scandal has flared up in the United States over illegal
shipments of Russian arms involving an international group of
smugglers. Yesterday the American authorities brought accusations
against 18 people, most of them natives of the former USSR. The
exposure of a network of smugglers offering weapons of every sort on
the American black market, from submachine guns and grenade launchers
to antiaircraft missiles, was the result of a unique, yearlong FBI
investigation.
At a press conference in New York, U.S. Attorney David Kelly gave the
details of this detective story, in which not only Russians,
Armenians, and Georgians appear, but also immigrants from South
Africa. According to Kelly, American special services succeeded in
uncovering and arresting an international band of smugglers headed by
Armenian Artur Solomonian and South African Christiaan Dewet Spies,
who are based in New York. Police captured both of them on Monday
night at a Manhattan hotel where the leaders of the criminal group
had arrived to approve the terms of a new deal with a potential buyer
who was an FBI informant.
According to Kelly, the mainly Russian arms smuggled into the U.S.
were acquired in Georgia, Armenia, and certain Eastern European
countries. It is a mystery how the arms landed safely in America
through three points at once – New York, Los Angeles, and Miami,
despite tightened border controls and unprecedented anti-terrorism
measures adopted by American special services in recent years. As
Kelly reported, before their arrest, the smugglers managed to sell
eight machine guns and other kinds of automatic weapons, including
AK-47’s and Israeli Uzis.
According to information in the American media, the smugglers were
exposed as a result of a yearlong special operation in which FBI
agents actively assisted their counterparts in Armenia, Georgia, and
South Africa. The investigators had tapes of 15 000 telephone calls
intercepted in recent months at their disposal, which gives an idea
of the scale of the operation. They were able to pick up the trail of
the criminal group after an informer of the American special services
reported his contact with people who had access to Russian-made arms
and wanted to sell them at a profit in the United States. At the same
time, the informer was shown photographs of pieces of military
equipment.
The ample opportunities available to the smugglers and the scale of
their operations are shown by the fact that, besides rifles, the
goods they offered included grenade launchers, antitank shells, and
shoulder-held antiaircraft systems. According to a report on the
American Fox News, the smugglers were expecting to get $2 million
just for homing missiles delivered to the United States. At the same
time, the New York Times in its version of the story wrote that the
unsuspecting Solomonian offered to sell the FBI informers enriched
uranium, which he claimed could be used in terrorists attacks in the
New York subway. However, the story that the smugglers had uranium
was subsequently not confirmed and was dropped. Kelly spoke of this
at his press conference yesterday.
If found guilty, Solomonian and Spies face a prison sentence of up to
30 years. The other accused could get from 5 to 20 years.
It is interesting that the scandal over Russian-made weapons,
including shoulder-held antiaircraft missile systems smuggled into
the United States, broke out soon after the summit of the presidents
of Russia and the United States, Vladimir Putin and George Bush, in
Bratislava. Among other things, they discussed the sensitive topic of
trade in shoulder-held antiaircraft missile systems, in particular
the possibility of their ending up in the hands of international
terrorists. The American side had previously expressed its concerns
to Moscow more than once that this type of Russian weapon, which
could be used to carry out major terrorist acts, especially to shoot
down planes, might end up in the hands of `unreliable persons’. Then
new evidence appeared yesterday that the Americans’ concerns were not
unfounded.
by Sergey Strokan