Share<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\nBout was estimated to be worth about $6 billion in March 2008 when he was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand.\u00a0<\/p>\n
U.S. authorities tricked him into leaving Russia for what he thought was a meeting over a business deal to ship what prosecutors described as ‘a breathtaking arsenal of weapons – including hundreds of surface-to-air missiles, machine guns and sniper rifles – 10 million rounds of ammunition and five tons of plastic explosives.’<\/p>\n
He was taken into custody at a Bangkok luxury hotel after conversations with the Drug Enforcement Administration sting operation\u00b4s informants who posed as officials of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, also known as the FARC.The group had been classified by Washington as a narco-terrorist group.<\/p>\n
He was brought to the U.S. in November 2010.<\/p>\n
The ‘Merchant of Death’ moniker was attached to Bout by a high-ranking minister of Britain\u00b4s Foreign Office.The nickname was included in the U.S. government\u00b4s indictment of Bout.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vladimir ‘s top allies in Russia are mocking America over the recent prisoner swap that saw the US release convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout in exchange for WNBA star , claiming that Russia got the better end of the deal. Maria Butina, the pro-Putin MP elected to Russia’s Duma after serving a US prison sentence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18653,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5083],"tags":[5078],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76278"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18653"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76279,"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76278\/revisions\/76279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}