Complex web entangles weapons seized in Thailand

SHYMKENT, Kazakhstan

The trail of the plane seized in Thailand last month for reportedly smuggling North Korean weapons to Iran leads back to a small air freight company housed near an old Soviet airfield on the edge of the Kazakh steppe.

The aging Russian plane’s odyssey took it through a web of companies, financiers and air cargo carriers with addresses stretching from New York through the Persian Gulf to New Zealand, an Associated Press investigation has found.

The persistence of carriers willing to ship anything anywhere for a price - even to countries under international sanctions such as Iran and North Korea - has frustrated global efforts to stem the flow of illegal arms.

Alexander Zykov, whose crew was flying the plane grounded in Bangkok, denied he had anything to do with the seized shipment of 35 tons of explosives, rocket-propelled grenades, surface-to-air missiles and other weaponry.

However, family members said the plane’s pilot and crew were working for Mr. Zykov’s East Wing air freight company when they were taken into custody. Also, crewmen who have worked for Mr. Zykov said they have flown cargo on rickety Russian planes into conflict zones such as Sudan and Somalia.

They often did not know what their cargo really was, four of the crewmen said. Two of them spoke of an industry that sometimes uses falsified flight documents and skirts customs rules.

The Soviet collapse left an infrastructure of idled aircraft and pilots desperate for work, and the families of the arrested crew portrayed them as pawns in this arms trade.

Speaking from the Kazakh city of Almaty, Mr. Zykov insisted that his crew wasn’t working for him at the time of the Dec. 12 weapons seizure. He said all five took unpaid leave about two weeks before the flight. He and his wife, Svetlana Zykova, who is listed as the plane’s owner, denied any knowledge that arms were involved.

“Go find the people who ordered this flight,” Mr. Zykov said before hanging up the phone.

No one has taken responsibility for the arms aboard the flight, which, had it not been seized, would have followed a circuitous route spanning more than 15,000 miles.

The case came to light when Bangkok police, acting on a tip, seized the Russian-made Ilyushin-76 cargo plane and its five-member crew - four Kazakhs and a Belarusian - after finding weapons on board. All five have been charged with possessing arms and are in a Thai jail pending investigation.

The Russian-language flight plan names Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran as the cargo’s destination. The cargo manifest lists “oil industry spare parts” of various types, but no weapons.

Aerotrack Ltd. of Ukraine and the Korean General Trading Corp. of Pyongyang, North Korea, are identified as the companies responsible for the cargo.

Shymkent, the town where the four Kazakh crew members live, is a dismal ex-Soviet outpost full of ramshackle houses and kebab shops. Mr. Zykov, a local cargo magnate, is something of a legend here, and the airmen who work for him are known around town as Zykovtsy - “Zykov’s guys.”

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