Andrew Smulian, 70, discussed his relationship with Bout and how they collaborated to sell arms. Smulian pleaded guilty in 2008 to conspiring to sell arms to terrorist groups, a charge Bout and his lawyers deny. He is incarcerated in New York.
Smulian was arrested with Bout in a Bangkok hotel in 2008 after both men allegedly offered to sell a trove of weapons to American agents posing as members of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) . Bout’s lawyer says his client only ever intended to sell two cargo planes, and only mentioned weapons in order to entice the potential buyers.
Smulian, who holds UK and South African citizenship originally met Bout through a mutual friend in 1997 when the Russian needed to use of an airstrip in South Africa for his cargo plane business. He also helped Bout obtain business licenses in Swaziland and Zambia. Smulian is set to continue narrating the events that led up to the Bangkok hotel room on Wednesday.
Smulian has been cooperating with US prosecutors for more than three years as part of the investigation into Bout, in the hopes that he will minimize his own sentence. Before his testimony, one of the DEA Agents who had posed as a FARC rebel spent three days in court poring over the audiotapes of the 2008 hotel room encounter and discussing the communications he and fellow agents had with Bout prior to the meeting.
The audio recordings brought to light Bout and Smulian’s offers of advice and assistance to the FARC rebels, promising to help them launder money in Russia, Belarus, and Venezuela.
Bout’s defense team sought to discredit the witness, arguing that the undercover agent, a former member of the Guatemalan military known only by the pseudonym “Carlos Sagastume,” was paid approximately $8.6 million by the US government for undercover operations like the one that resulted in Bout’s arrest.
