Viktor Bout

Explained: Who is Brittney Griner, the US basketball star released from a Russian prison?

Before being arrested by Russian authorities for possessing cannabis oil in February, Brittney Griner had an amazing career in basketball, winning two Olympic gold medals for the American team. After 10 long months, she now returns home after a prisoner swap with Moscow for arms dealer Viktor Bout

Who is Viktor Bout, the ‘Merchant of Death’, swapped for US basketball star Brittney Griner?

Depending on whom you ask, the 55-year-old Viktor Bout is a swashbuckling businessman unjustly imprisoned after an overly aggressive US sting operation or a peddler of weapons whose sales fuelled some of the world’s worst conflicts and earned him the ‘Merchant of Death’ moniker

'Merchant of Death': Swapped for US WNBA star Griner, how Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout became part of a deal himself

The 2005 Nicolas Cage movie 'Lord of War' was loosely based on Bout, a former Soviet air force officer who gained fame supposedly by supplying weapons for civil wars. His clients were said to include Liberia’s Charles Taylor and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi

US charges 49 Russian diplomats with healthcare fraud

According to the charges, filed in November and unsealed on Thursday, the diplomats' families got around $1.5 million in benefits from the Medicaid program for families with very low monthly incomes - in many cases around $3,000 or less. The benefits covered costs related to pregnancies, births and infant care, the charges say.