Not long ago, the European Union added a whole chunk of dodgy Moldovan airlines to its flight-safety blacklist after ramp checks showed their aircraft were unsafe. Now, we have reports that the Moldovans have taken the logical next step and drained the swamp, by revoking the AOCs of the companies in question. It’s bye bye…
Read More Firedumped: A Cast of ThousandsDoug Farah‘s book on Viktor Bout is out. You can read an excerpt in this month’s Men’s Vogue, which is certainly a fittingly Hunter Thompson-esque scene for him, and an interview. Salient points include this: I think one of the most startling moments for me was when we were talking to Treasury Department people doing…
Read More Book alert: Doug Farah vs Viktor BoutI can’t help thinking that if this LA Times story is accurate, those BGIA planes need a searching. In one of the most troubling trends, U.S. officials said that Al Qaeda’s command base in Pakistan is increasingly being funded by cash coming out of Iraq, where the terrorist network’s operatives are raising substantial sums from…
Read More Just another planeload of cash“Whoever dared paint markings on a plane’s wing was a swine,” said one of Pierre Clostermann’s comrades the night of the 8th of May, 1945. Latest reports from Sudan suggest you can do pretty well painting them out, too. The Sudanese government has been caught using various Antonov-26 aircraft to bomb villages in Darfur, having…
Read More Desert ViktoryIn a wonderfully-titled article, (“Former Miss Bolivia on Drugs Charges, Second Beauty Queen in Trouble”), the Associated Press reports that Sonia Falcone, cosmetics enterpreneur, Bush-Cheney’00 donor, and wife of Elf-Aquitaine/Arms to Africa fugitive Pierre Falcone, copped a plea to charges of illegally employing some immigrants (they were legal immigrants, but not allowed to work, so…
Read More Update on Falcone, ChichakliGambia’s President, Yahya Jammeh, whose personal plane, the Ilyushin 62M C5-GNM, is on the UN asset freeze list, is..well. You’d be surprised, but every now and then in this game I see something that shocks even me. Via Ben Goldacre’s Badscience, his pet newspaper, the Daily Observer, would like us all to know he’s discovered…
Read More Yahya Jammeh: Quite Literally the World’s Worst PresidentHow did I miss this? Perhaps through not reading the Kazakh press. A clutch of airlines were kicked off the Kazakh registry in October, including the storied GST Aero. (Gcached version here.) The story also mentions Phoenix Aviation, not sure why as it’s not a UN-registry outfit, and Reem Air. At the same time, Moldova…
Read More GST Aero DumpedIt’s time to shake up the embers of Operation Firedump, our effort to monitor compliance with the UNSC asset freeze list on the Viktor Bout companies. Since December, 2005, the original list of aircraft shows a few changes. UN-76497, Ilyushin 76-D. Serial number 43402039. This is probably the aircraft referred to in the UN list…
Read More Firedump: UpdateOperation Firedump has been quiet for a while, but here is some news. The Equatorial Guinea aircraft registry, 3C-, has been cancelled en masse in an effort to clean up. EG’s registry has been a pustular swamp for years, and this is a fine opportunity to flip some stones over. Air Bas and Irbis used…
Read More Where the billows a-breaking..At 2022 CET, 5th May, relay2.cia.gov was in the house, googling for “east-west cargo sharjah”. They read this post. One of the best ones here, I think.
Read More King of Referrers