6/17/2023 0 Comments 2017 ammo stockpile![]() ![]() The MEICO documents obtained by OCCRP show that nearly 110 tons of the RDX were sold in 2010. ![]() (The RDX had been stored at a separate site.) However, the cable notes that US diplomats had already heard rumors that an unnamed Czech company had attempted buy the explosives. ![]() US officials had asked Albanian authorities to destroy – and not export – its stockpile of 150 tons of RDX following the Gërdec disaster, according to the cable. ![]() The potential sale of the RDX explosive was being carefully watched by US diplomats in Albania as early as 2009, according to a State Department cable from July that year released by WikiLeaks. The remaining rounds – nearly 17 million – were also sold by MEICO to the Czech Republic, but it is not clear which company bought them. These cost a total of $920,160 – about three cents per round. Drda’s rival STV Group imported about another 31 million rounds of 7.62x39 mm ammunition, the type used in AK-47 assault rifles and other Soviet-style guns. Of the 81 million rounds, Real Trade Praha, a firm from Strnad’s portfolio, imported nearly 34 million in various calibers (as well as the 358 mortar rounds). It also sold 358 mortar rounds and nearly 110 tons of RDX explosive. They show that, between 20, MEICO sold a total of over 81 million rounds of ammunition – most of it Chinese-made and mostly of types used for Soviet-style rifles and machine guns – to the Czech Republic. The MEICO documents reveal specific details about nine deals the Albanian arms exporter made with the Czech companies. They show that, in seeking to smooth the movement of one shipment, the company sought help from Petar Crnogorac, a Serbian businessman previously investigated for attempting to sell weapons to Islamist fighters in Libya. “Yemen or an impoverished and conflict-ridden African country, like South Sudan, could also be a possible destination.”Ī separate set of leaked emails obtained by reporters throw more light on Real Trade’s deals. Georges Berghezan, a researcher for the Group for Research and Information on Peace and Security (GRIP), said it was likely that “the Czech firms re-exported the Chinese-Albanian ammunition to third parties and that the ammo finally ended up in the hands of Syrian rebels, Iraqi Kurds or central government forces, or Afghan security forces.” Instead, he said, typical purchasers of such ammunition might be “countries have relatively little money to spend which are in urgent need because they have a conflict ongoing and which have a procurement system which is not functioning particularly well.” Wezeman, senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). “There will not be any interest from the military or police side ,” said Pieter D. But, along with old Czech rounds, decades-old Chinese ammunition frequently makes its way onto battlefields in Africa and the Middle East. It is not used by NATO member states’ armies, including that of the Czech Republic. Decrepit and unreliable, Chinese ammunition of the sort kept in Albanian stockpiles is difficult to sell on the international market. The ammunitions purchases raise questions about what the firms did with their tens of millions of rounds. The documents also show that over 100 tons of RDX, an explosive, was sold from Albanian stockpiles to buyers in the Czech Republic, in spite of alarm by US diplomats over the instability of the material. Between 20, Real Trade Praha – the Strnad-linked firm – and the Drda-controlled STV Group bought tens of millions of rounds of old Chinese munitions between them, according to internal documents from Albania’s state-owned Military Export Import Company (MEICO). ![]()
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