Samuel Cummings

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Samuel Cummings (born 1927 in Philadelphia , † May 29, 1998 in Monaco ) was an American arms dealer .

Life

Cummings, who grew up in the United States as the son of wealthy British parents, was an arms collector from his youth. When the downsizing of the US Army after the end of the war offered new opportunities after 1945 , Cummings finished his studies at George Washington University and shortly afterwards studied at Oxford . When he visited the battlefields of World War II in Europe on that occasion , he decided to become an arms dealer. In 1950 he joined the newly founded CIA , where he initially identified weapons captured in Korea. At the beginning of his work as an arms dealer he posed as a Hollywood director and collected war weapons in Europe, ostensibly as equipment for films, and sold them to the then government of Taiwan for a profit of 100 million  USD . In 1981, Cummings took British citizenship . In 1981, Time Magazine named him the world's largest private arms dealer, especially in light arms, with offices in Great Britain, Panama, Monaco, Argentina and sales of up to $ 100 million in the US alone.

Activity as an arms dealer

In 1953, Cummings founded the arms trading company International Armament Corporation and left the CIA, with which, however, he maintained close business relations as a result. The International Armament Corporation's first project was Operation PBSUCCESS in Guatemala in 1954 . The company's headquarters were on the Potomac River in Alexandria, Virginia . In 1957 he supplied the Cuban guerrillas led by Fidel Castro with weapons paid for by the CIA.

Swedish DH100

Cummings organized 25 De Havilland DH100 Vampiers from Sweden for the Dominican President Rafael Trujillo's air force .

Republic F-84 in Luanda

In 1961, Republic F-84 aircraft were retired from the Air Force and transferred with the International Armament Corporation to Air Base No. 9 in Luanda . There they were used by António de Oliveira Salazar's 91st Squadron in the colonial war in Angola . When Fiat G.91 jets were sold to Portugal in 1966 , it was agreed that they would only be used on national territory. Upon receipt, Salazar declared the overseas territories his national territory.

The International Armament Corporation used the abbreviation Interarmco until 1967 . After a legal dispute with Armco Steel Corporation over the naming rights, it used the abbreviation Interarms .

1967 Cummings said before a Senate committee in Washington that in the year 1966 on the VEBEG development company for state-owned assets sold 90 North American F-86 of the Air Force of the Armed Forces in Iran are only between landed before continuing to Pakistan flew. In 1981 Interarms had 250 employees. In London, the company had a large branch on Bollo Lane for a long time. Mainly weapons from the stocks of the British army were bought and passed on there. The famous gunsmith Churchill Gunmakers was also part of the Interarmco Group.

literature

  • Bernt Engelmann : My friends, the arms dealers. Small wars - big business , Bergisch Gladbach (Gustav Lübbe Verlag) 1964.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Tim Weiner: Samuel Cummings, 71, Trader In Weapons on a Grand Scale. In: New York Times, May 5, 1998, accessed January 4, 2014
  2. ^ Time, October 26, 1981
  3. ↑ a b Good customers from the CIA. In: Der Spiegel from May 4, 1992, accessed on January 4, 2014
  4. ↑ Easy to obtain . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1978 ( online ).
  5. ^ Time , October 26, 1981
  6. ↑ Samuel Cummings, king of the arms trade, died on April 29th, aged 71. In: The Economist, May 7, 1998, accessed January 4, 2014.
  7. Jump up ↑ junk for Angola . In: Der Spiegel . No. 27 , 1961 ( online - photo of Cummings on cover picture).
  8. ^ Compulsion for Bonn . In: Die Zeit , No. 4/1969
  9. ^ John Paul Stanley, Maurice Pearton: The international trade in arms , Verlag Chatto and Windus for the International Institute for Strategic Studies , 1972, ISBN 9780701117450 , p. 30
  10. ↑ In the jungle of the arms trade . In: Die Zeit , No. 35/1967
  11. ↑ Prepare friend and foe . In: Die Zeit , No. 35/1970
  12. ^ Nothing for Mahboob . TIME October 26, 1981 time.com
  13. Jump up ↑ junk for Angola . In: Der Spiegel . No. 27 , 1961 ( online - photo of Cummings on cover picture).
personal data
SURNAME Cummings, Samuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British arms dealer
DATE OF BIRTH 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 1998
Place of death Monaco