Andrew Smulian, the white-haired former South African accomplice who was the government’s star witness against Viktor Bout, was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison for his own crimes. Smulian, who has been in federal custody since agreeing to cooperate with U.S. authorities after his 2008 arrest, will likely spend less than a year in prison because of the time already served since then. His plea agreeement holds out the possibility that he would join the U.S. witness protection program after his release from prison.
Smulian, 71, had known Bout since the late 1990s, when he worked in the aviation business with the Russian arms transporter, whose planes were then based in South Africa. Smulian also secretly worked as an informant for South African intelligence at the time, but insisted he did not spy on Bout. During Bout’s month-long trial last November, Smulian testified that he reconnected with the Russian and met with him for several days in Moscow in early 2008, laying groundwork for a planned sale of anti-aircraft missiles and other weapons to South American terrorists who turned out to be U.S. informants. In one intriguing admission, Smulian said the DEA, which ran the sting against Bout, had approached him as early as 2007 — before the 2008 arrest — to aid in the sting against Bout.
—New York Times, “Mr. Smulian testified that he began working for Mr. Bout in the late 1990s, helping to acquire a base in South Africa for Mr. Bout’s air-transport operation, and that he later assisted Mr. Bout in setting up companies in Swaziland and Zambia. The Drug Enforcement Administration approached Mr. Smulian as early as 2007, using one of his old friends who was secretly cooperating with the drug agency. Mr. Smulian was asked to convey a potential arms deal to Mr. Bout.”
—AP, “At the urging of a confidential informant, Smulian — who knew Bout when both were in the aviation business — unwittingly approached Bout in Moscow about supplying weapons on the black market to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.”