A Russian-Linked Arms Trafficker and a Network of Corrupt African Officials Tried to Supply a Mexican Cartel With Anti-Aircraft Weapons

CJNG — already implicated in Iranian-directed death threats against a Canadian politician — was the intended recipient of a $58 million arsenal that included surface-to-air missiles, DOJ alleges.

WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors in Virginia have charged four men — a Bulgarian arms trafficker with ties to the notorious Russian weapons dealer Viktor Bout, and several African co-conspirators with connections to the governments of Uganda and Tanzania — with conspiring to supply the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación with a $58 million military arsenal that included rocket launchers, surface-to-air missiles, anti-aircraft drones, and high-powered explosives the brokers boasted could bring down helicopters.

The international arms trafficking conspiracy deepens an already troubling portrait of the military reach and intelligence ties of the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación. Court documents unsealed by the Department of Justice, in an investigation first reported by The Bureau, revealed that Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security publicly issued threats directing the cartel to execute Goldie Ghamari — a prominent Iranian-Canadian activist and former Ontario politician — at her Ottawa home, offering a $250,000 bounty. The arms case suggests that the cartel Iran chose as its instrument of political assassination was simultaneously seeking the weapons inventory of a mid-tier military force.

The investigation was carried out by the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Special Operations Division — an elite, little-known counternarcotics unit that deploys high-grade intelligence tradecraft and has built its reputation targeting criminals of international reach, including those with connections to senior officials in hostile and corrupt states.

The April 2025 indictment, unsealed this month, identifies Peter Dimitrov Mirchev as the network’s central architect — a Bulgaria-based international arms trafficker the grand jury describes as having engaged in weapons trafficking for approximately 25 years. Court records note that Mirchev was previously implicated in supplying arms to Bout, the Russian weapons trafficker convicted in a New York federal court of conspiring to kill United States nationals, and conspiring to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Scott McGregor, a Canadian former military intelligence and federal police adviser, pointed to the case’s geographic sprawl as evidence of something beyond a conventional cartel prosecution.

“Not just a Mexico story. Not just a U.S. case,” McGregor wrote. “This DOJ case runs thru Bulgaria, Spain, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Morocco, and Ghana, tied to an effort to arm the CJNG with military grade weapons. That is the anatomy of a transnational threat network.”

Arms transactions of this scale require End-User Certificates and Delivery Verification Protocols — import-export documentation that tracks military hardware from manufacturer to declared recipient, and that exists specifically to prevent transnational criminal organizations from acquiring weapons through legitimate channels.

According to the indictment, Mirchev recruited Kenyan national Elisha Odhiambo Asumo — described by prosecutors as a longstanding associate who sources arms certifications from various African countries “through bribery” — to obtain fraudulent documentation that would falsely identify the Tanzanian military as the weapons’ end-user.

Asumo in turn recruited Michael Katungi Mpeirwe, a Ugandan national described in the filing as a Policy Advisor employed by the Government of Uganda and as a security logistics officer associated with the African Union Commission. Mpeirwe recruited Tanzanian national Subiro Osmund Mwapinga.

Together, the three men obtained an arms certificate bearing the seal of Tanzania’s Ministry of Defence and National Services, certifying that 50 AK-47 automatic assault rifles were destined “for the Sole use of” the Tanzanian military.

At meetings in Cape Town, according to the indictment, Asumo and Mwapinga described their work openly — they had been constructing a “paper trail,” designed to conceal that the weapons were intended for Mexican drug traffickers. In July 2024, Mirchev and others exported the 50 rifles and accompanying magazines and ammunition from Bulgaria. After the shipment was seized, Asumo obtained a false Delivery Verification Protocol purportedly signed by Tanzania’s Permanent Secretary for Defence, confirming the Tanzanian military had received the weapons — even though it had not.

In April 2024, Mpeirwe attended a meeting in London where he offered to obtain additional firearms for the cartel through a planned arms deal between the governments of Russia and Uganda, explaining that his government connections across Africa would allow him to easily procure End-User Certificates for future transactions in exchange for a two percent commission.

The test shipment, prosecutors allege, was only the beginning.

By October 2024, Mirchev was in discussions about supplying the cartel with surface-to-air missiles, anti-aircraft drones, and the ZU-23 anti-aircraft weapon system — a Soviet-era gun platform capable of firing 23x152mm high-explosive rounds.

Mirchev described the ZU-23 as able to “automatically” track targets, firing rounds that “could put down helicopters.”

These discussions led to the procurement list totaling approximately 53.7 million euros: 2,000 modernized Kalashnikov assault rifles, 68 rocket-propelled grenade launchers, 60 PKM machine guns, multiple grenade launcher systems, sniper rifles, night vision equipment, anti-drone systems, drones with multi-spectrum cameras, armored vehicles, and tens of millions of rounds of ammunition across multiple calibers.

The scale of the procurement — a combined-arms package of the kind assembled by small national militaries — offers a measure of why the United States government has come to regard the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación as an acute national security threat, not merely a criminal one.

According to the indictment, the cartel is one of Mexico’s most violent and prolific transnational criminal organizations, formed around 2011 and now operating across South and Central America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and throughout the United States.

Its primary criminal activity is the trafficking of cocaine, fentanyl, and methamphetamine, financed by billions of dollars in drug proceeds. The cartel uses violence against journalists, local communities, rival organizations, and government officials — attacks on military convoys and helicopters, assassinations and attempted assassinations — violence the indictment states is made possible in part by the illegal transfer of military-grade weaponry to transnational criminal organizations.

On February 20, 2025, the United States Secretary of State designated the cartel a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist — a designation that triggers the indictment’s third count, conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, which carries a mandatory minimum of ten years and up to life in prison.

The case is being prosecuted as part of Operation Take Back America. Mirchev was extradited from Spain. Asumo was extradited from Morocco. Mwapinga was extradited from Ghana. Mpeirwe remains at large.