To get into the game, Diveroli knew he would be dealing with some of the world`s shadiest operators – war criminals, makeshift hunters, crooked diplomats and petty thugs who guard the military and mercenaries loaded with weapons. The huge secondary arms market had grown exponentially after the end of the Cold War. For decades, the weapons had been stored in warehouses in the Balkans and Eastern Europe for the threat of war against the West, but now arms dealers were selling them to the highest bidder. The Pentagon needed access to this new aftermarket to arm the militias it had created in Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem was that he couldn`t enter such a dark underworld alone. It took MPs to do his dirty work – companies like AEY. The result was a new era of anarchy. According to an Amnesty International report, tens of millions of munitions from the Balkans were sent to Iraq secretly and without public oversight by a chain of brokers and private carriers under the auspices of the US Department of Defense. In the United States, motorcycle gangs have been linked to the arms trade. U.S. law enforcement began investigating bicycle gangs in the late `90s and began classifying them as organized criminal organizations. This was mainly due to the fact that they were able to take control of the prostitution market and the smuggling of stolen goods such as weapons, motorcycles and auto parts. [26] Since the beginning of the South Sudanese civil war in December 2013, shootings in that country have reached endemic proportions.
[14] As South Sudan has little electricity and no generation, both sides were completely dependent on the purchase of weapons abroad to wage their war. President Salva Kiir Mayardit has used shady networks of arms dealers from China, Uganda, Israel, Egypt and Ukraine to arm his armed forces. [14] When oil companies paid the rent for their concessions in South Sudan, the government could afford to buy weapons on a lavish scale. [14] In June 2014, the government`s National Security Service signed a $264 million contract with a Seychelles-based shell company to purchase 30 tanks, 50,000 AK-47 assault rifles, and 20 million bullets. [14] Who controls the mailbox company remains a mystery. In July 2014, Chinese arms manufacturer Norinco delivered 95,000 assault rifles and 20 million rounds of ammunition to South Sudan, delivering enough bullets to kill every person in South Sudan twice. [14] U.S. arms dealer and private military contractor Erik Prince sold three Mi-24 attack helicopters and two L-39 aircraft to the government for $43 million, as well as the services of Hungarian mercenary pilots to operate the aircraft. [14] The majority of Uganda`s arms supplied to South Sudan came from Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia, all of which are members of the European Union (EU) and were supposed to comply with an EU arms embargo imposed on South Sudan in 2011. [15] “The consequences are that you lose immediate control over the end user and allow them to manage your logistics and transportation, so you can`t tell who that equipment is going to fall into,” the arms dealer said. “So if you don`t set up your logs and deliver them to verified sources, the equipment could end up somewhere, and that`s your name on it, it`ll be on the end user`s statement if it`s transferred back to the wrong staff.” In February 2007, packouz took on a mammoth task, going alone to the International Defense Exhibition in Abu Dhabi to look for suppliers. “It was weird,” he says.
“I was just a kid, but I was probably the largest private arms dealer on the planet. It was as if Ephraim had put me in the movie in which he played the lead role. To look like an international arms dealer, Packouz wore a silver aluminum briefcase and wore circumferential hues. He also had business cards printed with an impressive new title, considering that he was part of an operation for two: vice-president. In your circle of friends and acquaintances, you probably know doctors, lawyers, artists, and maybe even a professional actor or athlete. But there`s a good chance you don`t know of any international arms dealers. What the arms dealer does is quite simple: he sells weapons. But there are obviously many aspects of this profession that remain hidden from most. .
