Viktor Bout is one of the world’s most notorious arms dealers, entrepreneur and former Soviet military translator.
Bout is alleged to have armed both sides in Angola’s civil war and supplied weapons to warlords and governments from the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo to Sudan and Libya.
He was released from US custody as part of a prisoner exchange with US basketball star Brittney Griner.
Biography of Viktor Bout
Real Name: Viktor Anatolyevich Bout
Date Of Birth: 13 January 1967
Occupation/Career: Arms Dealer
Children: Elizaveta Viktorovna Bout
Wife/Girlfriend: Alla Bout
Father:
Mother: Raisa Bout
Brother/Sister: Sergei Bout
Viktor Bout was born in Dushanbe, Tajik SSR, Soviet Union on 13 January 1967 to Raisa Bout.
Viktor Bout Net worth
Viktor Bout is an arms dealer from Russia with an estimated net worth of $50 million. Bout owns numerous air transport companies which allegedly used to smuggle arms.
Viktor Bout Occupation/Career
According to South African intelligence, Victor Bout is an ethnic Ukrainian. He became a Russian citizen following the 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Bout served in the Soviet Armed Forces. There is no definite information on his military career except that he graduated from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages.
He is thought to have been discharged from the Soviet Army upon its dissolution in 1991 with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Bout is famously known to have indulged in several exploits which inspired a Hollywood film, and garnered him an impressively fearsome nickname “Merchant of Death”.
He was extradited from Thailand to the US in 2010, after a sting operation by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
In 2009, Victor Bout flatly denied ever dealing with al-Qaeda or the Taliban but admitted flying arms to Afghanistan in the mid-1990s to fight against the Taliban.
He also claimed to have helped the French government transport goods to Rwanda after the genocide, and to have transported UN peacekeepers.
In the early 2000s the US made moves against him by freezing his assets, tough there was no law he could be prosecuted under in the US.
The US undercover agent posed as buyers for Colombia’s Farc rebels and gained an introduction to Bout through one of his former associates.
Shortly after officers discussed arms shipments to Farc with Bout and Thai authorities arrested him and lengthy legal proceedings began to bring him to the US.
However, Bout said the US case against him was politically motivated; his wife has been quoted as saying his only connection with Colombia was “tango lessons”.
Russian authorities supported him throughout his legal proceedings, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov vowing to fight to secure his return to Russia and labelling the Thai court’s decision “unjust and political”.
The 2005 film Lord of War, loosely based on the arms dealer’s life, has the anti-hero escaping justice at the end.
Bout has remained in prison in the US since his conviction in 2012 till December 8, 2022, after Russia engaged in a prisoner exchange with US for Brittney Griner.
Who is Viktor Bout Wife? Does Viktor Bout have kids?
Victor Bout is married to Alla Bout since 1992. They have a daughter named Elizaveta Bout.
Viktor Bout parents: Who are Viktor Bout parents?
The mother of Victor Bout has been identified as Raisa Bout. She is the mother of Viktor Bout and his brother, Sergei Bout.
There is no documentation about his father and the business of his family on the web.
Who is Alla Bout? Viktor Bout Wife
Alla Bout is the wife of the man known as the “Merchant of death”, Victor Bout.
She was born in 1970 in Saint Petersburg in Russia and has been the wife of the infamous arms dealer for 30 years even through his incarceration.
