Viktor Bout DEA Informants Paid Close to $1 Million

By Jeralyn, Section Crime in the News
Posted on Wed Oct 12, 2011 at 04:33:11 PM EST
Tags: Viktor Bout (all tags)

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Testimony began today in the trial of Viktor Bout (background here.)

The first government witness today was William Brown, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent who managed the investigation. The three undercover sources used to make contact with Bout and his associates and pretend to be FARC members were paid almost $1 million for their work on the case, he testified.

Bout, like other recent defendants in New York's Southern District kidnapped from foreign countries and brought to the U.S. for trial, lost his motion to dismiss the case based on manufactured jurisdiction. The judge granted his motion to suppress his statements to the DEA following his arrest in Thailand. [More...]

Bloomberg reports:

Scheindlin in August granted a motion from Bout’s lawyers to exclude statements he made to DEA agents after his arrest in Bangkok in March 2008, saying the agents ignored Bout’s request for more time to decide whether to talk.

That was hardly the only reason. From the judge's order, available on PACER:

In sum, based on the totality of the circumstances just described – the dramatic arrest, followed by a strip search and a non-consensual search of his belongings; handcuffs and a perp walk; the denial of his request for an attorney and contact with his embassy; the disregard of his statements that he did not wish to meet with the Americans and then that he was not in the frame of mind to speak with them that day; and Bout’s understandable belief that he would be abandoned to the rough conditions of a Thai jail if he did not cooperate with the Americans – I conclude that Bout’s statements were not made voluntarily and must therefore be suppressed.

Bout's defense, via the BBC:

Viktor Bout's lawyer says his client was the victim of a bait-and-switch con scheme by ex-criminal US informants posing as Colombian rebels. The wire-tapped conversations between Viktor Bout and Carlos and Richard, the US Drug Enforcement Agency sources, will be at the heart of the case.

In opening argument: