Matt will be talking transnational crime, Russian gunrunners and the deadly compromises between narco-mafias, FTSE 100 businesses, terrorists, ‘big aid’ and our own government at Swansea University on 28th February. The event, titled ‘Free market mercenaries: Cocaine traffickers, Somali pirates, and how the Soviet Union won the Cold War’ is organised by Swansea University’s Research…
Comment: Reign of Errors – The Merchant of Death story ends the way we all figured. Or does it?
News: Outlaws Inc published in Finland this week
This week saw the publication of Salainen Lasti in Finland. The Finnish-language version of Outlaws Inc means ‘Secret Cargo’, and weighs in at 477 pages, including new material on the conviction in Manhattan of ‘Merchant of Death’ Viktor Bout, and a whole chapter drawn from the secret DEA tapes of his sting and arrest…
Free-Market Mercenaries: Matt speaking at Swansea University on 28th February
Matt will be talking transnational crime, Russian gunrunners and the deadly compromises between narco-mafias, FTSE 100 businesses, terrorists, ‘big aid’ and our own government at Swansea University on 28th February. The event, titled ‘Free market mercenaries: Cocaine traffickers, Somali pirates, and how the Soviet Union won the Cold War’ is organised by Swansea University’s Research…
Comment: Duwayne Brooks and the London riot story that never got written
Some stories write themselves. Some never get written, though they’re better by far. There’s something irreducible about them, too many loose ends. They don’t have neat beginnings and endings. They don’t fit our (journalists’, readers’) idea of the arc. Sometimes they’re just collected impressions. This one’s like that, and I’m setting it down here simply…
Video: “Cocaine coffee tables?!” CNN bosses, the craziest cop in Brazil, and me
It started perfectly innocently. I was out with a friend on Thursday, and the phone rang. I didn’t pick up – it was ten o’clock, and I’d worked my way through six large glasses of what I remember being an increasingly smooth Italian red, and a couple of bottles of Grolsch for good measure.…
Review download: ‘Outlaws Inc.’ launches in Germany, gets full-page rave in The Literary Review!
Thanks to Britain’s leading literary magazine, The Literary Review, for their full-page write-up on Outlaws Inc. this month, by veteran BBC man John Sweeney. You can read the review by clicking on the scan above to enlarge – but suffice to say, I’m framing it and the cover. Coming on the heels of the Washington…
Analysis: Auto destruct: the curious case of the flaming Mercedes (…not to mention the Audis BMWs, Porsches & VWs)
Who (or what) is behind Berlin’s bonfire of the coupés? This time, it was Porsche lighting up the night with its flames. A high-spec Cayenne, freshly waxed with all the extras. Its owner had parked it outside his apartment around midnight on the 21st September. By ten to five in the morning, it was just…
Video: Matt on Fox News Live
During last week’s promotional visit to the USA, I appeared as a guest on Fox News Live. On arriving, you tend to think Fox News studios at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan is an imposing piece of work… but then you meet the presenters. I’ll be posting it as an iPod-friendly MP4 for…
Article download: Esquire takes up the story
This month, Esquire magazine took up the story of Outlaws Inc., publishing a three-page expose of the phantom cargo trade in the Middle East. You can read the feature for free here by clicking on the layout image below and opening it on your desktop.
Outlaws Inc is Maxim magazine’s big adventure
Maxim magazine has made Outlaws Inc. its adventure of the month for August, with a three-page feature interview on some of the key locations featured in the book. From mafia-run Belgrade to the bootleggers’ paradise of Kabul and war-torn Africa, the feature takes a long, hard look at just how the guns, drugs and gold…