Paul le Roux sounds like the name of a guy who could live at the end of your road, although if he did you’d be sure never to make eye contact or let your dog crap on his lawn.

That’s because he runs one of the world’s biggest drugs and arm smuggling rings, although it is believed that the 43-year-old Zimbabwean (who also holds South African and Australian passports) is now working with the DEA as a government informant.

The guys over at VICE have written an extensive piece on le Roux, although many details remain a mystery, so I’ll just pluck some highlights to throw your way:

What is publicly available paints a picture of Le Roux as a swashbuckling international criminal mastermind. Beyond drugs and guns, Le Roux was allegedly involved in arming a militia in Somalia, illicit gold smuggling in West Africa, harvesting exotic timber in the South Pacific, money laundering, and the development of encryption software. Le Roux is also allegedly linked to a yacht that washed ashore on the Pacific island of Tonga with $120 million worth of cocaine and a dead body onboard.

“Mr. Le Roux probably was the most dangerous man in the world,” said Joseph Friedberg, the defense attorney for Moran Oz, an Israeli man accused of working with Le Roux in the pharmaceutical scheme. “There’s nothing he hasn’t done”…

…Le Roux was taken into US custody and now faces an array of drug charges. The documents, a pair of sealed indictments and what’s known as a “consent to transfer of case for plea and sentence,” indicate that Le Roux has agreed to plead guilty to charges that he plotted to smuggle meth from Liberia to New York…

The government’s reluctance to discuss its deal with Le Roux, combined with his apparent role setting up his former associates, raises troubling questions about how far US agents are willing to go in order to make high-profile cases. While it’s common for investigators to turn suspects facing charges into informants in exchange for leniency, they typically work their up to the top of a criminal organization — it’s rare to use the boss to set up underlings…

I suggest you clear a few minutes out of your busy schedule and give the full article a read HERE, he seems like quite the character.

Heads up – the southern tip of Africa also boasts the man called the most highly-trained covert operative in the world (HERE).

[source:vice]

[imagesource:dailymail]