A Swiss arms dealer named Henri Thomé brokered illegal U.S. payments to Albanian officials. When whistleblower Costa exposed the scheme, he was found dead in a field a week later, run over by his own car. The death was ruled an accident, but the timing suggests a cover-up tied to organized crime.
Now we weren't paying the Albanians directly. We were paying through a Swiss arms dealer guy in the movie. He's played by Bradley Cooper. Gotcha. Right. Yeah. And based on a real guy. His real name is Henri Thomé, not Henri Girard, as they call him in the movie. But in real life, he was a lot more clean-cut than Bradley portrayed. Bradley has this like rough character. He's like all bloodshot and like unshaven. And in real life, he looked more like a Swiss banker. Right. You know, like very well-kept, very soft-spoken. He's like the real deal. This guy's been in the business for like 30 years and like He has connections everywhere. He was like best friends with the prime minister of Albania's son, which is how he made this deal. Gotcha. He connected us with the Albanian government. We were paying everything through Henry. Henry was paying the Albanians. He was greasing the— I imagine. I don't know. It would be illegal for me to know that, right? Because it's illegal to pay foreign officials bribes as a US citizen. Whether he was or he wasn't, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I was paying him. That's all I needed to know. But Costa told the Albanian press that these guys were getting— I don't know if he knew or if he was guessing, but he said that. And that got in— it became a big scandal in Albania. Ah. And like a week later, Costa ended up dead. Wow. Yeah. Is that in the movie? So in the movie, they say that the driver ended up disappearing. In real life, there was no driver. Okay. In real life, it was the box guy who got killed. Right. Now, they made it look like an accident. Yeah. They found him face down in the dirt in some field. Yeah. Where he had been run over by his own car. And there was no other cars there. Yes. So like what happened there? Of course the government, the Albanian government classified it as an accident. Right, right. Gotcha. And they closed the investigation and that was that. It was done. But I don't think anyone really thinks it was an accident, you know. Yeah, I think that most people think it was because it happened like a week or two after the Albanian press published their articles that Albanian politicians look really bad. And it came out later the Albanian politicians were in league with the Albanian mob who were getting a piece of the action. And so, yeah, I mean, like, when Efrem negotiated with the Albanians, he was negotiating with a guy named Deliorgi. Okay. And later on, Deliorgi went to prison for being involved in the Gurdek explosion and also being like part of organized crime in Albania. Gotcha. So there was some connection between the Albanian politicians and organized crime in Albania. Now, we were paying Henry, so we weren't directly connected, but yeah. So the mob's involvement makes Costa's death even more suspicious.
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