The Italian Five Illeagle Arms Dealers May be Named

Switzerland can reveal the details of the bank accounts of five Italian citizens accused of illegal arms trafficking, a court ruled on Tuesday.

• Italian prosecutors asked Switzerland for help in a case brought against alleged black market dealers to sell arms to Libya and Iraq.
• The accused are suspected of using bank accounts in Geneva and Lugano to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to Libyan officials.

The weapons affair is said to involve plans for the delivery of 500,000 Chinese-made machine guns to Libya and 150,000 guns and machine guns to Iraq.

The alleged dealers had asked the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona to block the release of their details.

The court dismissed their request on the grounds that although Swiss banking secrecy laws normally forbid the divulging of information, this does not apply where there is a strong suspicion that a crime has been committed.

The plaintiffs, who were not named by the court because of privacy rules, can appeal against the ruling to Switzerland's highest tribunal, the Federal Court.

The Rest @ SwissInfo

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Why is it so easy for Arms Traffickers to live in the open and operate in in the dark? Why are they so easy to find and even track, and yet so hard to hold accountable for death and destruction?

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Former Argentinian President Carlos Menem on Trial

Former Argentine President facing arms trafficking trial

Published in: Legalbrief TodayDate: Tue 21 October 2008Category: CriminalIssue No: 2179

Former Argentinian President Carlos Menem goes on trial this week for allegedly orchestrating a scheme to smuggle weapons to Croatia and Ecuador while both countries were involved in wars.

Menem (78), a two-term president (1989-1999), faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted on all charges, according to a report on the IoL site.

The case centres around three decrees Menem signed authorising the shipment of about 6 500 tons of weapons to Panama and Venezuela, the report says. The true final destination, however, was Croatia and Ecuador. Menem publicly acknowledged signing the three decrees, but insists the transaction was legal.

This Report from Legal Briefs


Details of the weapons shipments surfaced during a judicial investigation and were made public by the prosecutors.

Menem publicly acknowledged signing the three decrees, but insists the transaction was legal because the weapons were being sent to peaceful countries.

• The weapons to Croatia were sent in seven shipments aboard freighters between 1991 and 1995.
• At the time much of the Balkans was under a United Nations arms embargo following the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
• The weapons sent to Ecuador arrived aboard three flights in February 1995. At the time Ecuador was engaged in a border war with Peru, and Argentina was banned from selling weapons to either side because it was one of the guarantors of a peace agreement the two nations signed ending an earlier war in 1942.
• Prosecutors estimate that the government lost some 123 million dollars in the illegal transactions, though the amount could be higher because one attorney believes that there were further shipments previously unaccounted for.

Witnesses scheduled to testify in the case include former presidents Raul Alfonsin (1983-1989) and Fernando De la Rua (1999-2001), both from the social-democratic Radical party, court sources said.

Menem enjoys immunity from imprisonment - but not from prosecution - as senator for his birth province of La Rioja.

Any sentence he might incur would not be served until his senate term expires in 2014, unless he resigns or is fired by his peers. Menem earlier spent five months under house arrest in 2001 on charges of masterminding the arms deals, but was set free by a Supreme Court ruling.

The case against Menem was filed again after president Nestor Kirchner (2003-2007) replaced all the High Court members.

Also implicated in the alleged smuggling operation are former defense ministers Oscar Camilion and the late Antonio Erman Gonzalez, late foreign minister Guido Di Tella, former air force chief Juan Paulik and a dozen lesser officials.

Full report on the IoL site

Uralwagonzavod

Uralwagonzavod is the Maker of the up coming T-95 Tank

-Editer

Uralvagonzavod (Уралвагонзавод, Dzierzhinsky Ural Railroad Car Works, "Uralsky vagonostroitelny zavod imeni F.E. Dzerzhinskogo, UVZ) is an industrial location in Nizhny Tagil, Russia. Its official designation is Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Production Association Uralvagonzavod" , or Vagonka for short.

The plant was built during 1931-1936 (mostly during the second five-year plan), launched on October 11, 1936, and named after Felix Dzerzhinsky. Initially it manufactured freight cars.
After the German invasion of 1941, Stalin ordered hundreds of factories in Ukraine and western Russia to be evacuated east. The KhPZ Factory No. 183 in Kharkiv was moved to Nizhny Tagil by rail, and merged with the Dzerzhinsky Works, to form the Stalin Ural Tank Factory No. 183. During the Great Patriotic War it became the largest producer of tanks in the world, including the T-34. After the war, tank production was scaled down, and part of the Vagonka's manufacturing and design assets were transferred back to Kharkiv's Diesel Factory No. 75 during 1945–51.

After the war it was expanded to produce machinery of other destinations: agricultural, construction, aviation, and space, including design and production of the Vostok, Voskhod, Proton and Energia expendable rockets.

It is the location of the Kartsev-Venediktov Design Bureau (OKB-520) where the T-54A and T-55 (development of Morozov's T-54), T-62, T-72, and T-90 tanks have been designed, and probably Russia's future main battle tank, rumoured to be called the T-95.

Its gradual privatization is planned, beginning in 2006.

The Rest @ Wikipedia

BeltechExport of Belorus

Export of equipment manufactured by the enterprises of the Republic of Belarus:

• automated control systems for troops, armament and communication systems;
• fire control systems for armored material; sights and night vision devices for small arms;
• off-road heavy-duty trucks and wheeled tractors; EW systems;
• simulators

Repair and upgrading of armament and military materiel.

• Supply of armament, military equipment and spare parts.
• Research engineering, development of fundamentally new armament, simulators, training centers.
• Training of personnel for Armed Forces.

The main principle of work of our Company is strict adherence to international requirements and standards in the field of military and technical cooperation and full and proper fulfillment of its commitments towards Customers and Partners.

Geography of partnership relations of our Company is sufficiently wide and spreads all over the countries of

• Africa
• Asia
• Middle East
• Latin America.

At present Beltechexport Company has its official representations in

• Vietnam
• United Arab Emirates
• Libya
• Russia
• France.

Company offers supplies of the following armament and materiel for the Land Forces:

• Towed and self-propelled artillery;
• Ammunition for small-arms and artillery systems of different caliber;
• Tanks Т-55, Т-72, Т-80 of different modifications;
• Infantry combat vehicles BMP-1, BMP-2;
• Anti-tank guided complexes;
• Small arms;
• Engineering armament and ammunition;
• Ground reconnaissance radars.

The Rest @ their website

comment by editor:

They seem to supply anyone anywhere with anything