majority, the open question remains just how much more the composition of the bends will continue to push us policies towards more conservative interest. at a time of entrenched differences in a country so diverse. you're watching dw news from berlin, a big she's got a documentary for you, looking at the world's most dangerous arm dealer and said carl, lee on terry morrison for me and all of us here at dw, thanks for watching the interest in the global economy. our portfolio dw business be here's a closer look at the project. to analyze the flight for market dominance.

get a step with d. w. business beyond the they're all on the f. b i's most wanted list murderers, human traffickers, millionaire fraudsters, drug lords, terrorist and this man. he's a threat to world peace and a key figure in the struggle between super powers. his name is lee sun way, but he also calls himself carl lee and uses several other aliases. there's no criminal on the list with a higher bounty. $5000000.00. the c i a massage, the german b, n. d and others by agencies have been pursuing him for decades. one us president even intervened per solely to no avail. there still is this air of mystery around

this karl. he reminded me of sir, who lives in columbia and drugs alone. so, you know, like pablo escobar, i would say that in all likelihood, he is an individual who exists the he's a hunter, focused on a particular prey,

the most unscrupulous arms dealer on the planet. my name's aaron arnold. i was a intelligence analyst at the f. b, i the carly case was the most unique case that i ever participated in. i don't really recall any cases that reached sort of this level of sophistication, an entry the hunt is for offense to, among other things, was able to help iran obtain nuclear weapons. and of whom there's just a single old photograph. this is a sort of another mystery of carly wire. there are more pictures and their videos. and that's uh, kind of rare this day and age to be able to hide for so long without your photo being taken. aaron arnold left the f. b i for academia years ago. but this particular story has clung to him ever since it turn into you know,

one of these spaces where, you know, after a day of trying to answer questions you end up with. was more now many investigators intelligence agency operatives and diplomats of all had the same experience as parent arnold, the a suburb of washington. home to many of those responsible for planning america's wars and shaping us foreign policy among them. the man was probably the 1st to pick up carl lease trail. my name is van van deepen. for about 14 years, i ran the office and the state department responsible for among other things missile nonproliferation. preventing the spread of tma missiles is among the

president's highest national security priorities. for years he served as national intelligence officer for weapons of mass destruction and proliferation and worked for the u. s. department of state until late 2016. so through all that time, i had some level of responsibility for dealing with the carly problem, the, the carl lee problem. when us intelligence agencies going about their daily business of collecting communication data 1st came across suspicious transactions by a chinese businessman. no one suspected the dimensions, it would eventually assume the that would have been in the early 2, thousands, i think, every day, as part of my job responsibilities, i would be reading the intelligence reporting that came in overnight. and there would have been some, what we call, ron intelligence reporting, that would have, you know, 1st met sions,

the activities of carl lee. the us government soon realized they picked up the trail of a serial offender. shipping material for the construction of ballistic missiles to iran in breach of 2006 un security council sanctions on t, ron. he was pretty active and so you know, probably every week or 2 something would come up and as things came up, we would try to act on that. behind the scenes, they apply pressure the department of state, shared information on carl lee's shipment roots with the governments of other nations. so they could take is containers out of circulation when the ship discharged its cargo. sometimes, you know, something would come out of the other end of that process that you wouldn't, you know, put into play and watch develop. and sometimes you weren't able either because we didn't know enough or the intelligence behind it was so sensitive that we couldn't risk compromising it. you had to sort of sit back and let that one go. and so

within a few years, carl lee became the trusted supplier to the iranian weapons industry. the israel's buy agencies also stumbled upon carl lee. at the turn of the millennium, they feared the business men from china could increase the range of their arch enemies missiles. with dramatic consequences for israel it was more than 20 years ago when v you renew is k for spine to north korea asking for besides too bike is in the middle school and it will very um, open towards the needs and they say we have here on the shelf besides my,

as many as you want, the, you want any question was really interesting. what is the range of to me sense? and when the newest korean told into the range is 1000 kilometer the say, we don't by this is less than 1300. we don't need and we all want to do maps to see what the 3 hundreds we add to the capability and it was really clear the use less than getting keep to the top of the, you know, 30 $2.00 a difference of 300 kilometers to potentially cause hundreds of thousands. so say technologies, investment there will you heat, you keep so crowded into keels. many

israel is regularly hit by smaller missiles but partially due to car leaves shipments. the country came within range of iranian missiles that were at least 15 meters long, with a potential to carry nuclear warheads. one of the liver technical solutions included replacing steel with all you, many of the menu installing that you're steering. so then they became the warhead, smaller and amending the stability of the aerodynamics elder. not suddenly. and you can shoot these. my cells are for 1500 kilometers and putting israel within range like the, the german federal intelligence agency, the b and d, british m. i. 6 and other secret services also began homing in on carl lee during the 2 thousands of the big wouldn't been long before we decided that we needed to try to figure out a way to go to the chinese government. because if we really wanted to stop him,

we had to somehow persuade the chinese government to do the initially the us believed this approach would be successful. and so then we would start a dialogue with the chinese government variety them information about karl lee's activities and trying to you know, see if we could somehow both assist and persuade them to take action at the time china government had just changed its approach to weapons exports in the eighty's and ninety's proliferation from china was focused mostly on exports from nature, state firms, firms, but clearly were connected and controlled by the chinese government. and these firms were selling complete systems to countries of concern along with the chinese

economy. beatings influence grew. china presented itself as a responsible global power and endorsed several agreements aimed at preventing miss styles and warheads from falling into the wrong hands. trying to definitely has international obligations to do something. i mean, they're a party to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. they have said that they are adhering to something called the missile technology control regime. so coming back to car lead, according to that regime, china is meant to be controlling missile related technologies of the type that currently is providing. as a permanent member of the un security council, china also supported the 2006 sanctions on iranian nuclear activities. but carly continued to supply t. ron, every month, every couple months, as the information came in, you know, we would, you know, seek to what we called the marsh, the chinese government about lee and his activities. and so there's a, you know,

of a very long history of us to marcia's, to the chinese complaining about lee and asking them to take action about that in the white house at the time, george w bush, in 2008. his secretary of state stepped in personally under lisa rice, instructed her diplomats at the us embassy and aging, to ramp up the pressure. they were told to work on the chinese government to ensure its intervention in the case grace and several secret dispatches heavily incriminating carl lee. they were concerning the supply of machinery for miss l. construction and harmless sounding substances, such as aluminum and graphite kind of feature the phones. with those thrusters of these up which reach into the steel into themselves, exhaust gases, they split changes direction to predict simply. so the missile key can use the stuff coming or something like can disappear. it is only just it's thought

carly also supplied iran with a large number of gyroscopes. goes copeland, china scoop is essentially themselves freedoms by sensory organs. it's a lower than the cell to determine where it's moving, the city where it's going, how it's moving, kind or steer density. on course, of course flight carl lee appeared to be supplying enough of these for an entire arsenal of miss tiles. those are fine instruments that require careful calibration. you can see in the quantities that carly has applied and you have hundreds, hundreds of accelerometers, hundreds of actuators that have been supplied. so this is not one or 2 pieces that are on needs. this is something that they need for each and every missile that they're building. in 2009, brock obama's democrats moved into the white house. the new secretary of state hillary clinton pursued her predecessors course and changed. after just

a few weeks in office. she had her diplomats deliver a message to the chinese government. we strongly urge you to investigate these activities. signed clinton there are certainly lots of things that he's doing that are legal. in china, from our standpoint, there's plenty of domestic legal basis for the chinese to to take action. but for whatever reason they have the my name's adam kaufman. i started working in the manhattan district attorney's office in 1994. i was a street crime prosecutor starting with terry minor

crime, working your way up until you're handling more serious in violent crime. i then went and worked in narcotics bureau that prosecuted international shipments mostly coming up from mexico and south america truckloads of usually cocaine, sometimes heroin. after that, i found myself wondering what i should do. and i went and spoke with mister morgan thought and 2003, robert morgan with the district attorney of manhattan. he came from a jewish family that had fled germany escaping persecution. his father was us secretary of the treasury during world war 2 and creator of the morgan law plan to turn germany into an agricultural nation. after the war, he supported the fledgling state of israel, which left its mark on robert morgan thought in 1961, his friend john f. kennedy appointed him district attorney of new york. he went on

to become one of the most influential figures in us, judicial history. we had a tremendous amount of personal courage. he wasn't afraid to take on difficult cases. he suggested that i joined this little bureau call investigation division central. it was a bureau that sort of handled mister morgan thought his interest in international markets in the recognition of the place that manhattan played in global finance with wall street as a close neighbor, morgan thought set out to be more than just an attorney for manhattan. he saw himself as a prosecutor for international crime. manhattan is unique because we have so much of global finance passes through manhattan international wire games. international security has so much international global business takes place within a mile of the court house in manhattan to morton thought those was these

investigators could hunt down any criminal whose money passed through manhattan, which happened when someone in the city made a dollar transfer. that meant the long arm of morgan reached in to every part of the world. and he was not afraid to flex those muscles and to impose himself into international finance, where really, very few district attorneys would be able to go. one day, when the district attorney was well over 80, his path crossed karl lease. morgan thought i had received a tip off fee of one of his secret contacts. it was probably around 2005. he called us into his office and he told us to buy tickets and get on a plane. and had israel, the being told that we were gonna go meet with is really intelligence officials. i had no idea what to expect

the when the new york investigators arrived, they never heard of carl lee. all they knew was their boss was very worried about the country. his father had once supported. he viewed iran as a threat to israel, but he also had a view based on terrorism. he also viewed it as a threat to new york and to the citizens of new york. you know, coming out of $911.00 the, these were the years when the world found out about the rhone secret emissions to build a nuclear bomb for israel, an ex essential threat. the reason for a highly unusual meeting. i had never heard of the local prosecutor going to meet

with foreign intelligence services. that was something that i had never heard of you know, we're not the federal government, we weren't the c, i a, we weren't anyone like that. but for mr. morgan, the, it was sort of business as usual the these realities had an extensive program as you would expect focusing on around in w. m. d, and missile procurement. the foreign spite agency massage had been watching karl lee for a while. but china was one of israel's key trading partners and the government didn't want any open conflict with badging. so all of a sudden the new york prosecutors were in a room with the head of most odd. i remember sitting in a meeting with mired the gone and mister to gone saying, we don't want intelligence to sit on the shelf. we want to act against it. and i

understand that mr. morgan thought feels the same way. and so we want to help you make cases if we can, that you can bring to expose. what do you, ron is doing? and he said, we want to give you the tools and if you can use them, we want you to israel's massage, began secretly collaborating with us, prosecutors in regards to a mysterious businessman and china. they gave us some o printing information and it was about carl is the to this day, the authorities believe he's here in one of ages, most important ports, cities. it's about 1000 kilometers to the south of karl lee's home. a long day. not far from the

border with north korea, metropolis, a millions that profited in the nationwide economic boom of the 1980s. at the time, the nation was opening up to the west. thanks to hans dang shopping. now, successor p set up special economic zones in china, where for an investment was possible that's how dang broad capitalism to china. the in 1984, he also may dial in a special economic zones. it's not possible to say precisely when karl lee's family ended up there. despite meticulous research, no details of his use exist. people that knew him didn't talk. you have doherty's

divulge nothing. as though issued with a blanket directive to remain silent, rumors and vague scraps of information are all we have to go on. it's thought he attended a school in dallas in named number 24, an elite school for the children of high ranking party officials. that wouldn't match the claim. the carl least grandfather was a highly decorated colonel in the people's liberation army. it's also thought carl lee worked intermittently for the state, but it's not known in what capacity. one thing's for sure. he made full use of deleon's advantages. the port city is a great place to do business, legal, or otherwise the, you have a lot of foreign us firms or european firms that have branches there that have fits and you factor things in china from an opportunistic point of view it's, it's

a great, it's a great place if you want to be a proliferate or because there are a lot of places to hide. the here in dallas, in a business was registered in the late 19 ninety's. it's named lived economic and trade company. according to the chinese companies register, carl lee's father league region had himself listed as the company's legal representative . on the 4th of june, 1998. this company was the seed for carl lees commercial empire. the israel ease gave us some of the substance and content of certain emails that showed references to w. m d and other materials for weapons procurement, missile production, things like that. the

we would work until late at night. we'd order in pieces, peers, and just work on this thing all the time. the prosecutors, we're in luck because in one particular aspect, carl lee had been extremely reckless. some of the e mail addresses were from us providers, hotmail, or yahoo, because they were in the us, there was a procedure to get access to this content of those emails from the email service providers. so we had a starting point. we had some very talented, tenacious prosecutors working on the case, and they just dug into the information they were making connections. what they found trumped all their findings. to date, the investigators stumbled upon in new were bold transactions and a seemingly impenetrable network of dummy companies. we found so many

channels of w, m. d, proliferation of money moving through different countries. he had a real global network. i remember that very well the, this mission was so fundamental, especially when we started seeing what was in the emails themselves. it became very real t road. we are the same company, the factory, the people as the previous to limped. the only difference is that the company's english name has changed to so you know, metallurgy and metals industry. he would email people and say, well, don't worry about us sanctions. i'm just going to change the name of my company. i mean, he was brazen in the emails. he urged his business partners into the fray. this is very important, he wrote. otherwise the money can be blocked like last time. there

were transactions between metallurgists all over the world providing material that carl lee would then provide to iran. and carl lee had to pay for those materials from us dollars. us dollar payments almost always clear through banks in the us, and especially back in the early 2 thousands, most of those banks were in manhattan. so if the wire payment said carl lee or leif on way, then yes, the banks would have stopped them. but if the wire payment said the bright and shiny metal are just company, then there's nothing for the us banks to see. and the payment just goes through. that was the whole idea of carl lee in setting up all of these dummy companies. it was to full the us banks in the processing payments that otherwise would have been lost although he was hiding thousands of kilometers from manhattan. investigators wanted carly to face trial in new york. the legal

theory we came up with was that by sending the wire payments and false names, carly caused the bank records of the manhattan banks to have false information and falsifying records. falsifying the records of a business is in new york state crime. and so all of this came down to the falsifying of business records of banks in manhattan. the after months of investigations, the indicted carly manhattan district attorney. robert morgan talk announced a 118 count, indictment against the chinese citizens. the april 7th, 2009. was the press conference that we had to announce the indictment of carl lee.

it was the opportunity for mister morgan thought to show to the world that this chinese proliferate or was sending material to iran that was going to kill people. the he wanted an indictment that said china is providing w m d to iran. he wanted the world to sit up and take note of this. robert morgans all filed for the extradition of car a lease who was 36 years old at the time. the big question is, the chinese government, though, after all chinese banks were involved in some of these transactions. chinese companies have long been accused of using shell companies in the united states, kitty pilgrim sienna, the but the chinese government appeared just interested in the extradition attempt. and kara lee was cautious if

thought he left china for business in t. ron on a direct flight. that way he wouldn't run the risk of being detained on a for, and stop over and deliver directly to the us. the, i don't remember seeing his name a lot in us documents. i'm thinking, you know, who is this guy? my name is diane supposed pre. i'm a researcher king's college in london. how are i researched for the operation and arms exports and arms and fungus, daniel salisbury, as a researcher at the department of war studies, the academics maintain good connections with western intelligence agencies and are often interested in the same things. their specialty is digging up information accessible to anyone, but found by few when you start looking at these cases,

a lot of information is kind of hidden in plain sight. um, so we, we use the help from some chinese linguists and really started exploring what was out there on the internet. the researchers use chinese keywords to come through commercial registers, customs and cort databases. in this way, daniel salisbury and his colleagues were able to shed light on carl lees network of companies from their based in london. we found that most of his businesses was linked to 2 addresses. the so the use you mention appears to be a launch office book in downtown dot in is not quite as cold as crazy, but it is quite to has a lot of floors not much. and this is the administrative part of the operation. working with our chinese linguists, were able to find some pictures of the outside of the building. got a sense for what it looked like and what kind of things could go on. yeah,

a lot of businesses were registered the administrative functions and creating hiring people and my kind of things. and they made another discovery. one that totally changed their impression of carl lee. one of the companies, they were able to attribute to him had a website that it showed he wasn't just a dealer. you got a lot of product listings from various different types of graphite. we actually realized that the address out of town wasn't just a business address of the warehouse or an office, but it was actually the large crow flight factory really changed the scale of the problem and online. i mean, it was room kind of mind blowing discovery. the satellite imagery is, it's a pretty big place, i think online. and it was facing about a 2000 square meters. i was quite difficult to verify exactly what's going on inside those photos, the photos of the factory company. these things are in china. it becomes

a completely different kind of problem. following months of preparation, a fact finding mission to china itself in the city were investigators, by agencies and the london researchers believed carl lee was hiding. the, the, all the tracks left by the world's most wanted arms dealer converged in the city in dalia and as easy as if he left them. and many, many companies with an electric connection to carl lee or registered in dahlia does too. yet we assume that if we were going to find them anywhere, and that's where you'd be. when the pandemic began,

china cut itself off from the rest of the world. the government expelled many foreign journalists and stopped issuing visas for short term reporters. the only way of getting closer to carl lee for this film was to call on those who were long term residents in china. in this case, christoph kingston and lucky is building a cruise, the camera man the to begin their search for a single individual in a metropolis of 7 and a half 1000000 last year for all types of elf grove ones, because they have to type in these 2 feet of food, we test ourselves to visit many of the companies that are our were registered there and the and, and find out what we can actually see. can also see can we talk to the, him come on, dr. who might provide us with the next set of clues in this puzzle laid out in front of us. good stuff on site seems to be in vice. we find clues that would lead

to really verify his existence. is asked to the board as the officer tom vine to the 1st building we have visited was an office tower block, more or less than the center of donnelly and bell is combined. officer thomas by king's college report mentioned it as a presumed center where carl lees empire, it's very likely to be based the of our time least call the police and purely on the sides. it's hot enough. i've gotten hired in the past car. a lease companies are said to have rented a whole floor. there is the 25th floor. different buildings is consultants. we took the lift up there. we could find the was he actually there in person? did he have body guards? would he call the police at the end of the cord or

a surprise and do some good boy, it isn't done. asked. there were 8 offices in your apartment when it could be. we knocked on every single door. i'd send it to and get dropped off and, and when no one has ever heard of the businesses registered to that building or even the much the, the trail at nowhere unexplored nation. the my name's thomas countryman. i was a foreign service officer for a total of 35 years. from 1982 to 2011. i served in 5 different embassies overseas, at the united nations at the white house, at the pentagon, mainly focused on issues in eastern europe. and the middle east. countryman has served several presidents over his career when it came to u. s. foreign policy. he was viewed as an old, rounder, with a keen eye for detail,

but then from 2011 to 2017, was the united states assistant secretary of state for non proliferation. in short, the bureau of international security and non proliferation has a job that we described as keeping the world's most dangerous weapons out of the hands of the world's most dangerous leaders. the and then in that job, one of my important tasks was to constantly res, with the chinese government. our concern about the illegal exports of high tech material that mr. lee was working icing from china to the this building and paging diplomatic quarter played a crucial role here. the iranian embassy is usual means of contact was through the

rainy and defense that tashay invasion. the primary job of the rain in defense of tashay and beijing is to acquire technology that was needed for a bronze military programs. when countryman took up his post, karl lee had already been doing business with iran for a decade. the problem was that he had become, in essence, the most valuable member of the uranium ballistic missile team. so you can't say that his arrest would have ended the rainy and ballistic missile program, but were convinced that it would have slowed it down significantly. the i spoke about him in every conversation that i had with chinese counterparts. we would often see each other at the same meetings in new york in vienna in geneva. but we also met in each other's capital as in washington and vision. the case put

a huge strain on relations between the 2 super powers be sort of wash their hands of it saying hey, this is in china, this is some guy. but on the other hand, were incredibly put out by a sanctioning chinese entity. so they sort of tried to have it both ways and so you know, often times the, the rhetoric or get a little heated when it came to, ah, you know, them being upset about a sanctioning chinese entities and including quarterly. but why was china doing nothing? the us had a hunch they thought carl lee must have had powerful allies within the chinese government. after public prosecutors in new york now the f. b, i america's most powerful investigative authority, said it's sites on carly. i think that the scope and scale of his sort of operation

really eclipsed any other type of case that the f b i was familiar with at the time the f b. i assigned an entire group of investigators and analysts to work on the case of the chinese businessman. i rather not talked about sort of the specifics of like who and how many were working on those. any h r personnel issues or kind of off limits with the intel stuff. it can be in like a documentary, but partly was a major focus and something that was a priority investigation at the guy. you know, just for a number of years when roughly the 2014 timeframe not only had carl's activities, you know, continued to develop and worse than but other options that other agencies were thinking about pursuing started to be, you know, become in viable. so for example,

would be sending agencies that would, you know, would like to try to prosecute carly in the us courts. and after a number of years, they sort of recognize that just wasn't going to happen. that did become clear that we had both an obligation and an offer to redeem, with the chinese government, to press harder to get the chinese government to stop mr. lee from exporting this technology to iran. at the time, china was on the brink of a new era. teaching thing took over the reins of power in 2012 for the west, a chance to shine a spotlight on the matter with carl lee included a diplomatic approach to china. that emphasized not only at my level, but at higher levels of the us government the name has gone to president obama. i'm also aware that president obama

mentioned that name to the chinese, you know, specifically complained about it. unfortunately that did not result in any real change and carl's activities and behavior in the us government then launched a response of unprecedented scale in the case of an arms dealer. we had several meetings, sometimes at the state department, sometimes at the executive office building next to the white house. that's part of the white house by agencies investigating authorities and several ministries joined forces to plan a coordinated strength. there became sort of a carly blips that was rolled out by the inner agency. and so you saw, you know, a us criminal indictment. you saw some additional sanctions including sanctions of new types coming out, etc, etc. it included the legal pressure

of the f. b. i so this was carlie's mistake, that is illegal transaction. he used the american financial system. and so this was the lever that the f, b i department of justice had to pull and ultimately ended up seizing almost $7000000.00 of car lease money. you saw um, you know, a reward for his, you know, information leading to his capture. the us announced a $5000000.00 bounty for information leading to his arrest. much like drugs, lord el troppo, for us on the been lab. and after his attacks on to us embassies, you know, if you look at sort of averages, you know, usually seen, you know, 1000000 or so 5 is high and significant mean something, right? yeah, it's a lot of money. the,

a special edition of complex own. we tend to baskin this is a border crossing point from moldova into ukraine, severest fight to the current moment between ukraine and russia, is roughly a 100 kilometers away. the big question dominates here, is where the mo,

data is to put in the next target. in 30 minutes on dw, to the point to clear positions international perspectives, the masters of rock that roots short lived revolt in russia. ukraine is trying to take advantage of the instability of its enemy. but there is a growing concerned pollutant and the russian army could escalate further awhile back until the corner. so on to the point we ask after pretty guardians we built house street system the d w the we are all set and we'll what sing closely. we all seem to bring use a story behind the news. we rolled about unbiased information

all 3 months. done the . this is dw news live from ballot. and from the government is struggling to respond to growing on rest. for the night, riots has done cause and vandalized buildings. after the police shooting of a teenager, president him on the cross cultural trip to brussels for another crisis meeting. also coming up as of training and force.