Two Romanian businessmen and an Italian politician got caught trying to sell rocket launchers and AK-47s to Colombian terrorists. But one now claims he was really just helping the CIA. A wacky tale is playing out in a federal courtroom in New York City, where a Romanian security consultant is on trial for an illegal $17 million weapons deal.
In 2014, Virgil Flaviu Georgescu got caught in a federal sting operation. He was brokering a deal that involved selling machine guns and rocket launchers to the Communist guerrilla fighters of FARC, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia.
The weapons would go to FARC soldiers who explicitly said they intended to kill American federal agents and shoot down the cocaine-crop-destroying helicopters flown by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. FARC’s half-century-long jungle revolution is being paid for by its $1 billion annual cocaine business. Except the weapons were never actually sold. The supposed FARC buyers were actually DEA informants.
But that’s not Georgescu’s defense at his criminal trial this week. He admitted in court that he helped broker the weapons deal, but claims that the entire time he was just taking part in the deal to give information to the CIA.
Read more at ABC
Image courtesy of aljazeera.com
Two Romanian businessmen and an Italian politician got caught trying to sell rocket launchers and AK-47s to Colombian terrorists. But one now claims he was really just helping the CIA. A wacky tale is playing out in a federal courtroom in New York City, where a Romanian security consultant is on trial for an illegal $17 million weapons deal.
In 2014, Virgil Flaviu Georgescu got caught in a federal sting operation. He was brokering a deal that involved selling machine guns and rocket launchers to the Communist guerrilla fighters of FARC, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia.
The weapons would go to FARC soldiers who explicitly said they intended to kill American federal agents and shoot down the cocaine-crop-destroying helicopters flown by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. FARC’s half-century-long jungle revolution is being paid for by its $1 billion annual cocaine business. Except the weapons were never actually sold. The supposed FARC buyers were actually DEA informants.
But that’s not Georgescu’s defense at his criminal trial this week. He admitted in court that he helped broker the weapons deal, but claims that the entire time he was just taking part in the deal to give information to the CIA.
Read more at ABC
Image courtesy of aljazeera.com
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