Leonid Efimovich Minin (Born 14 December 1947) is an international arms trafficker. He was arrested on August 4, 2000 by Italian authorities in Cinisello Balsamo

Cinisello Balsamo

Cinisello Balsamo is a comune of c. 74,000 inhtabitans in the Province of Milan in the Italian region of Lombardy, located about 10 km northeast of Milan downtown....

 near Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

. Minin had been under surveillance since 1992 for his suspected illegal arms dealings, mostly to West African nations. He was sentenced to two years in prison in Italy.

He was born in Ukraine, but moved to Israel in the 1970s. In the mid-1970s, Germany arrested him for falsifying identity documents and he was suspected of theft of art. He moved to Bolivia, Switzerland, Germany, Monaco, and Italy. In the 1990s he opened a timber business registered in Zug

Zug

Zug , is a German-speaking city in Switzerland. The name ‘Zug’ originates from fishing vocabulary; in the Middle Ages it referred to the right to ‘pull up’ fishing nets and hence to the right to fish.The city of Zug is located in the Canton of Zug and is its capital...

 in Switzerland as well as offices in Monrovia

Monrovia

Monrovia is the capital city of the West African nation of Liberia. Located on the Atlantic Coast at Cape Mesurado, it lies geographically within Montserrado County, but is administered separately...

 in Liberia and Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...

 in Israel.

It is believed that his customers have included Liberian dictator Charles Taylor and the Revolutionary United Front

Revolutionary United Front

The Revolutionary United Front was a rebel army that fought a failed eleven-year war in Sierra Leone, starting in 1991 and ending in 2002. It later developed into a political party, which existed until 2007...

 militants in Sierra Leone. Police found documents regarding these transactions in Minin's belongings. The arms allegedly came from Aviatrend, a Russian company owned by Valery Cherny. The same Aviatrend has been involved in money laundering by Slobodan Milošević

Slobodan Milošević

Slobodan Milošević was President of Serbia and Yugoslavia. He served as the President of Socialist Republic of Serbia and Republic of Serbia from 1989 until 1997 in three terms and as President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000...

.

Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage is an American actor, producer and director, having appeared in over 60 films including Raising Arizona , The Rock , Face/Off , Gone in 60 Seconds , Adaptation , National Treasure , Ghost Rider , Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans , and...

's character in the film Lord of War

Lord of War

Lord of War is a 2005 French-German-American action drama film written and directed by Andrew Niccol and starring Nicolas Cage. It was released in the United States on September 16, 2005, with the DVD following on January 17, 2006 and the Blu-ray Disc on July 27, 2006.Cage plays an illegal arms...

is a composite of Minin and suspected arms smuggler Viktor Bout

Viktor Bout

Viktor Anatolyevich Bout is a convicted arms smuggler. A citizen of Russia, he was arrested in Thailand in 2008 and was extradited in 2010 to the United States to stand trial on terrorism charges after being accused of smuggling arms to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia to use against...

.

See also

• Russian Mafia
  Russian Mafia
  The Russian Mafia is a name applied to organized crime syndicates in Russia and Ukraine. The mafia in various countries take the name of the country, as for example the Ukrainian mafia....
  
  
• Victor Bout
• Igor Sechin
  Igor Sechin
  Igor Ivanovich Sechin is a Russian official, considered a close ally of Vladimir Putin. Sechin is often described as one of Putin's most conservative counselors and the leader of the Kremlin's Siloviki faction, a statist lobby gathering former security services agents...