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Friday, December 2, 2016

Weapons trafficking

MERCHANT OF DOUBT

A soldier handles one of the 9,517 weapons seized from the FARC and ELN guerrillas criminal gangs and organized crime, before being melted in furnaces of the National Steel Factory (Sidenal), on November 25, 2014 in Sogamoso, Boyaca department, Colombia. The metal (iron and steel), obtained from these weapons will be used in the manufacture of rods used to reinforce the foundations and columns of schools and hospitals in areas of armed conflict. AFP PHOTO/Guillermo LEGARIA        (Photo credit should read GUILLERMO LEGARIA/AFP/Getty Images)
IN THE LATE evening of December 15, 2014, agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration descended on a hotel in Podgorica, Montenegro, to take into custody a man arrested by local authorities for arms trafficking.
Flaviu Georgescu, an American citizen from Romania, had been in the DEA’s sights for years. A tall, heavyset man in his mid-40s with close-cropped hair, Flaviu worked as a private security contractor in Bucharest.
Over the past several months, Flaviu had been meeting with a Colombian man who claimed to be a member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. This man had sought Flaviu’s help setting up a multimillion-dollar arms deal to help rearm FARC in Colombia. Arrested with Flaviu in the hotel that night was another man, Cristian Vintila, then a high-ranking government minister in Romania and another participant in the alleged arms deal. It seemed like a high-profile nab for the DEA.

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