WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department imposed broad financial sanctions Tuesday against the international arms network of Russian air transporter Victor Bout, freezing the assets of 30 companies and four individuals, including an American named as Bout's chief financial officer.
The move is aimed at crippling a global air empire accused of violating weapons embargoes in African civil wars for more than a decade. In addition, U.S. officials for the first time publicly accused Bout's operation of massive arms shipments to the Taliban in Afghanistan in the 1990s.
Although freezing assets has been a key weapon for the U.S. in its campaign against Al Qaeda and charities and banks suspected of being terrorist fronts, it has rarely been used against nonaligned international figures like Bout.
The move prohibits transactions between sanctioned firms and American businesses. Treasury officials said they would ask foreign governments to join the sanctions and would urge the United Nations Security Council to follow suit.
But the U.S. will also have to police itself. Over the last two years, air companies connected to Bout have operated hundreds of flights into Iraq for private contractors and the U.S. military, reaping millions. Last week, a plane operated by Irbis, one of the Bout-linked firms cited Tuesday, reportedly flew from an airbase controlled by the U.S. military in northern Iraq.
"At a minimum, it's going to make Bout's life and business very difficult to manage and to operate," said Juan Zarate, assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes at the Treasury Department.
Bout was targeted individually by U.S. sanctions last year. But arms experts say Bout has shielded his assets and planes over the years by churning them through a shifting network of holding companies and registries scattered from Liberia to Delaware.
On Tuesday morning, Treasury and FBI agents served search warrants on businesses in the Dallas suburbs of Plano and Richardson.
Authorities said the firms were connected to Richard Chichakli, a Syrian-born accountant whom they described as Bout's U.S. financial officer. The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control named Chichakli as a Bout associate and targeted three air cargo firms and five other companies in Texas.
Chichakli did not respond to repeated phone calls and e-mails. But in previous interviews with The Times, he admitted setting up U.S. branches of San Air and Air Bas -- two targeted Bout firms -- and trying to build an airplane parts factory for Bout in Texas.
