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Profits of doom Agroplast called tip of global arms-selling network as Czech officials slowly grapple with MiG-smuggling probe by Jeffrey Donovan Nearly a year after an obscure north Bohemian firm made headlines for trying to smuggle MiG fighter jets to North Korea, Czech authorities are still grappling with a case that reads like a James Bond script. Last spring in Baku, capital of the ex-Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, a giant cargo jet belonging to a private Russian carrier was detained before takeoff. The reason? Suspicion of old-fashion gun-running. Inside the belly of the massive An-124 were the disassembled parts of six MiG-21 fighters, as well as other unspecified weapons. It was also carrying a Czech executive by the name of Zbynek Svejnoha. Svejnoha, a ranking employee of the Liberec-based company Agroplast, was not on the passenger manifest. Agroplast holds an official license to process mining and glass waste. Nowhere on the license are weapons mentioned. Yet weapons, and allegations of trading in them, plague the firm. Washington has already slapped a commercial ban on Agroplast, suspecting it of involvement in arms trafficking. "The interest of our secret services in this company [Agroplast] goes back a few years, but we've only had a full picture for about a year," Minister Without Portfolio Jaromir Basta, who oversees the Czech secret services (BIS), told The Prague Post . "[Agroplast] has been a leading firm in a global chain of arms smuggling." Although Basta's immediate political future is in doubt, the ongoing Agroplast investigation has the makings of an explosive scandal. The wealthy company has been linked to the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) of former Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus. Some allege that the ODS may have received financial assistance from Agroplast, although the charges are as yet unsubstantiated. Basta and international diplomatic sources expressed alarm that an investigation into Agroplast, launched in June by justice officials in Teplice, in north Bohemia, was not moving fast enough. Indeed, the slowdown -- coupled with the U.S. sanctions -- has embarrassed the Czech Republic, now a NATO member but still recalled by Western intelligence sources as a onetime arms hub for Warsaw Pact countries. Busted in Baku The events in Baku are shrouded in half-truth and mystery. On March 19, 1999, the Russian-owned Antonov, which had taken off from Kazakhstan, touched down for refueling in Baku. Its official cargo was listed as some 50 tons of scrap metal. Azeri inspectors, tipped off, found the weapons load. Early on, the crew claimed that the plane and its payload were bound for North Korea. Russian authorities, meanwhile, asserted it was headed for Slovakia. Officials in Bratislava immediately denied that they had made any MiG purchases. Svejnoha and the 33 other passengers and crew said nothing -- at least not officially. All were released after 12 days following the unsolicited intervention of Yuri Luzhkov, the powerful mayor of Moscow. Predictably, Svejnoha did not return to the Czech Republic. A month later, in applying its Agroplast sanctions, the State Department contended that despite the Baku bust, Agroplast had mediated the sale of not six but 40 MiG-21s to North Korea, which is technically in a state of war with Washington, Prague's biggest NATO ally. North Korea, which has been accused of attempting to develop nuclear technology, is also under an international arms embargo. In January, Kazakh officials admitted that their armed forces had provided the weaponry, worth about $8 million (280 million Kc). General Bakhytzhan Yertayev, the Kazakh chief-of-staff, was charged in the case and stepped down. "The [Kazakh] government candidly admitted that the transfers occurred, contrary to official government policy," U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin said. Agroplast, meanwhile, vigorously denies any wrongdoing. It has said it will seek some $300 million in damages from the Czech government for undermining its business reputation. The firm refused to respond to queries from The Prague Post. A leaked Czech secret service report labeled Agroplast as among the world's leading arms smugglers. Still, state investigators have stopped short of issuing international arrest warrants for Svejnoha or Agroplast chief executive Petr Pernicka, who is also on the lam. Both men are believed to be somewhere in Russia in an effort to evade prosecution here on arms trading allegations. Authorities believe Russia, still loaded with Cold War-era weapons, harbors the firm's trafficking activities. "It is sort of a catch-22 situation," said one international diplomatic source. "They say they can't issue an arrest warrant until they question the two men, but they can't question them until they return to the Czech Republic. So the whole case is just kind of stalled." Basta all but admitted that the case was a public relations fiasco for Prague. "It is a problem," he said. "I have tried to ask the minister of justice and minister of interior for some better results in this case. But I am still waiting for their answer." Bureaucratic double-talk Prague Post inquires appeared to support Basta's frustrations. The Justice Ministry said the case was in the hands of the Interior Ministry, which in turn said it could not comment immediately on the case. Basta, faced with the suggestion that Czech authorities were guilty of complicity in the case, was ambiguous. "I am not convinced that police and other parts of law enforcement are doing their job well," he said in English. "No, I am not convinced." He added that he believed some Czech media had campaigned against issuing arrest warrants for the two executives. "Somebody is not convinced that they [the warrants] are needed," he said cryptically, singling out the weekly magazine Tyden for running what he suggested was a campaign in defense of Agroplast. "For example, after the Baku incident former Deputy Health Minister Ales Dvoulety tried to request, on behalf of Agroplast, a license to sell arms and military material," said Basta. Dvoulety, a lawyer, did not reply to several phone requests for comment on the case. The secret service report, leaked last fall, contended the Baku incident provided little more than a small window into a vast and sophisticated arms smuggling network, with Agroplast running a major part of the Czech show. "Reports about what happened in Azerbaijan are a walk through a rose garden compared to what they have already done," one government source was quoted as telling daily Mlada fronta Dnes when the report was leaked. Czech investigators are reportedly considering a second probe into the company over another arms case. Agroplast is believed to have signed contracts and accepted partial payment to provide spare parts and arms, including the anti-aircraft Tunguska system worth $5.5 million, to Croatia and Bulgaria. The deal apparently never went through. The Bratislava connection Czech media have said the firm acted mainly as a mediator for the owners of former Soviet military technology and the rogue governments that seek to buy it. But Basta said he was convinced that Agroplast had a larger role. "They were also the organizers and initiators of this business, not only one link in the chain," he said. He added that the company was able to conduct its business without notice for so long because "most of the activity occurred outside the territory of the Czech Republic." Basta, who said Agroplast had used Bratislava's Stefanik Airport for much of its alleged smuggling activities, said the company was not merely backed by Moscow banks, as some reports have suggested. "They made enough money to buy a bank in Moscow," he said, chuckling. "Yes, they own more than 50 percent of the bank, but it is now in liquidation." He would not reveal the name of the bank. "The intervention by Luzhkov says a lot about this case," he said. "We are thinking that there must be more than these two people involved. There must be some people in Russia, too." Last fall, allegations surfaced that Agroplast, which shares the same Liberec office building with ODS Senate Deputy Chairman Premysl Sobotka and ODS deputy Jiri Drba, had once sponsored Klaus' party. Sobotka denied having any connection with the firm. Klaus hedged his bets. "I cannot rule out that I have met this person [Pernicka]," he was quoted as saying. "But if I come across him on the street, I am not sure I would know who he is." Meanwhile, analysts say that Agroplast is not the only firm in the Czech Republic that continues to ignore the country's new geopolitical allegiances and sell military technology to countries that have turned from friend to foe. "Prague's relations with its NATO allies will suffer if it continues to ignore the problem," said a recent report by Global Intelligence Update, a publication covering international intelligence, "especially if NATO pilots and soldiers fall victim to the weapons." Jeffrey Donovan's e-mail address is jdonovan@praguepost.cz.
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