A Russian arms dealer who was freed by the United States in a prisoner swap with basketball star Brittney Griner is now back in business and selling weapons to Yemens Houthi militants, according to reports.
Viktor Bout, dubbed the Merchant of Death by Western security services, was allowed to return to Russia less than two years ago after more than a decade behind bars in American jails.
Before his arrest in 2008, the 57-year-old spent years selling Soviet-made weapons in Africa, South America and the Middle East, with his life inspiring the 2005 Nicholas Cage film Lord of War.
Seemingly leaving behind his days as a weapons broker, Bout won a seat in local government as part of a far-right pro-Kremlin Liberal Democratic Party last year.
But when emissaries from the Iran-backed Houthi rebel group travelled to Moscow in August to negotiate the purchase of $10 million worth of automatic weapons, it was Bout they met with, sources told the Wall Street Journal.
Both the Kremlin and Bout have hit back at the article, labelling it fake.
Bout won a seat in local government as part of a far-right pro-Kremlin Liberal Democratic Party last year
Viktor Bout, sits behind bars at the criminal court in Bangkok, Thailand, 11 August 2009
Pictured: Merchant of Death Victor Bout (right) is seen smiling during the prisoner swap in the UAE. Griner is shown in red, left, as she is handed over to US officials
Houthi supporters hold up their weapons during a protest in solidarity with the Lebanese and Palestinian people in Sanaa, Yemen, 04 October 2024
The article appeared to have been published to coincide with Russian President Vladimir Putins birthday, Bout reportedly told the RBC newspaper.
He also reportedly praised the Houthis for what he cast as their military achievements, saying they are doing their job quite skillfully and had shot down US drones.
Meanwhile Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow was inclined to see the story as in the category of fakes.
The Biden administration has feared that Russia may provide the Houthis with antiship or antiair missiles in retaliation for its support for Ukrainian strikes inside Russia with US weapons.
Such missiles could pose a serious threat to ships in the Red Sea, which the US and UK militaries have been working to protect from Houthi attacks.
The arms deal reportedly struck by Bout is said to only include small arms, however this would still be of concern to Washington, which proscribes the Houthis as a terror group.
The WSJ reported that Steve Zissou, a New York attorney who represented Bout in the US, had declined to discuss whether his client had met with the Houthis, and that a Houthi spokesman declined to comment.
Bout is escorted by members of a special police unit after a hearing at a criminal court in Bangkok October 5, 2010
Bout was one of the worlds most wanted men prior to his 2008 arrest in Thailand.
He was snared by the US Drug Enforcement agents in a devilishly complicated sting operation in 2008 in which he thought he was selling arms to the FARC - Columbian rebels - to shoot down US passenger jets.
He was convicted on multiple charges related to arms trafficking and conspiring to kill Americans and was extradited to the US, where he was sentenced by a court in Manhattan to 25 years in prison.
At trial, Bout maintained his innocence. A jury heard that when a terrorist organization told him that his weapons would be used to kill American pilots, he replied: We had the same enemy.
Russia has always proclaimed his innocence, describing his case as a glaring injustice and attempting to secure his release.
Bout, who is ostensibly from Tajikistan but holds multiple passports, was released in exchange for Olympic gold medalist Griner in December 2022.
Bout pictured during his time in the Russian military aged 20, he was known to be fluent in a number of languages
The US Department of Justice described him as one worlds most prolific arms dealers, accusing him of selling weapons to terrorists across the globe, including many of Americas enemies.
Among Bouts most infamous acts was stealing $32 billion worth of weaponry from Ukraine between 1992 and 1998.
He is reported to be fluent in several languages and to have served in the Soviet army as a military translator, including in Angola, a country that would be central to his later career.
He has said he attended a Moscow language institute that serves as a training ground for military intelligence officers.
Perhaps surprisingly, he is also known for his vegetarianism and environmentalism, with associate Michael Cichakli previously telling the New York Times: Hes a vegetarian. Hes an ecologist. He believes in saving the rain forest.
It was in Africa where Bout honed in on his environmentalism, photographing wildlife and learning about local tribes.
Pictured: Merchant of Death Viktor Bout is seen onboard a plane heading back to Russia
He said in 2003: What I really want to do now is to take one of my helicopters to the Russian Arctic north and make wildlife films for National Geographic and the Discovery channel.
After the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, he was able to capitalize on a glut of cheap, Soviet-made weaponry that could be sold to customers in Africa, Asia and South America.
Operating out of the United Arab Emirates, he used a fleet of Soviet-era Antonov planes, that he found discarded in disused air force bases, to supply guns to insurgencies, warlords and rogue states around the world.
The CIA and MI6 began tracking Bout in a serious way in the early 1990s as he began transporting all manner of things, including mining equipment and chickens, throughout Africa.
It was at this time that Bout became friends with despotic leaders across the continent.
Between 2003 and 2008, Bout is thought to have rarely left Moscow. Its believed that the US string operation teased him away from his homeland
In 2000, security agencies discovered that Bout was at the helm of possibly the biggest arms trafficking operation in the world.
His moniker, Merchant of Death, was coined by British Foreign Office Minister Peter Hain, who said in 2003: Bout is the leading merchant of death who is the principal conduit for planes and supply routes that take arms... from East Europe, principally Bulgaria, Moldova and Ukraine to Liberia and Angola.
Hain added: The UN has exposed Bout as the center of a spiders web of shady arms dealers, diamond brokers and other operatives, sustaining the wars.