MADRID: Spanish police said on Saturday they had arrested a Polish millionaire suspected of masterminding a ring that smuggled assault rifles and heavy weapons into South Sudan.

The gang sold more than 200,000 AK-47s, as well as missile launchers and tanks at a time when South Sudan spiralled into civil war, investigators said.

Police said the man was detained on Tuesday along with eight individuals in a coordinated European operation, culminating a four-year inquiry.

His identity and details about who purchased the weapons have been withheld.

A resident on the island of Ibiza who hid behind tight security, the suspect had been posing as an economic adviser to the prime minister of the West African state of Guinea-Bissau and used a fake diplomatic passport, a police spokesman said.

His base in Ibiza was a luxury sea-view villa, with a plaque on the gates that described the site as being consular territory, which thus had diplomatic immunity, they said. He headed an international network of front firms with links in Belgium, France, Germany and Britain whose headquarters were based in tax havens.

The gang used the firms to procure weapons, notably in Eastern Europe, and a Polish company owned by the suspect acted as a go-between with the buyers, the spokesman said. The Pole, arrested with eight others, allegedly used the Gambian presidential plane for one of his trips.

Published in Dawn, July 24th, 2016