Bangkok - RUSSIAN arms dealer Viktor Bout was usually a careful man, dealing with customers through intermediaries and ordering subordinates to throw away cellphones, receipts and anything else that could be traced.

After two buyers claiming to be Colombian guerillas approached him last November, he tried to double-check their identities using photographs of known leaders of the group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The prospect of a US$15 million (S$21 million) arms deal lured him from Moscow to Thailand this week for a final meeting with the buyers. It turned out to be part of a four-month sting by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) with secret help from security officials in four other nations.

Bout, dressed in scruffy khakis and an orange polo shirt, was arrested at his Bangkok hotel on Thursday by the Royal Thai Police.

His odds-defying career as an amoral arms merchant who sometimes supplied both sides in military conflicts has been the focus of journalistic exposes, a recent book and, loosely, a 2005 movie called Lord Of War, starring Nicolas Cage.

Bout, 41, has at least five passports, is fluent in six languages and has used numerous aliases and birthdates, the authorities say.

Emerging from the wreckage of the former Soviet Union, he used military and intelligence connections to become the 'FedEx of arms dealers', in the words of a US arms sales analyst.

He allegedly used front companies and fleets of military cargo planes to drop weaponry into war zones from Africa to the Middle East.

He has recently weathered international sanctions by hiding in plain sight in a luxury apartment building in Moscow, while the Russian authorities deflected outside attempts to apprehend him.

US and European intelligence agencies have long suspected that he received assistance, particularly early in his career, from Soviet and, later, Russian intelligence agencies. He has denied it. The list of his alleged customers stretches across at least four continents since the early 1990s, with a special focus on Africa.

The US Treasury Department accused him of supplying arms to both the Taleban and its Al-Qaeda allies in Afghanistan before the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, while also providing weapons to the opposing Northern Alliance.

In Zaire, now known as Congo, he allegedly supplied arms to rebels fighting the late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, turned around and helped Mobutu flee the country, then flew humanitarian cargo into the devastated country.

'One of the most fascinating things is his ability not only to supply different sides of a conflict, but to live and tell about it with no one killing him,' said Mr Douglas Farah, a former Washington Post reporter who co-authored a 2007 book about him, Merchant Of Death.

Other alleged customers over the years include former Liberian despot Charles Taylor, Unita rebels in Angola and the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone.

The Treasury Department sanctioned him in 2004 for alleged war profiteering because of his ties to Taylor, and later froze the assets of 30 companies and four individuals linked to him in 2006.

He is also accused of violating United Nations arms embargoes in numerous conflicts, and has been subject to a UN travel ban.

He has periodically granted media interviews to deny the voluminous allegations against him. In a 2002 interview with the Echo of Moscow, he said he does 'aviation lifts', adding that it is his 'main business'.

On the Al-Qaeda arms-sales allegations, he said: 'It sounds more like a Hollywood blockbuster.'

He even critiqued the Lord Of War.

'I am sorry for Nicolas Cage', he told MosNews in 2006. 'It's a bad movie.'

WASHINGTON POST