
The World's Most Dangerous Arms Dealer
Karl Lee, born Li Fangwei in China, has spent two decades supplying components for Iran's ballistic missile program while staying almost entirely out of sight. The film traces how a businessman running front companies out of Dalian became one of the US Treasury's most sanctioned individuals, wanted by the FBI with a multimillion-dollar reward on his head, yet never extradited or tried. Interviews and investigative reporting piece together his network of shell companies, the intelligence agencies that have tracked him for years, and the diplomatic limits that have kept him untouchable inside China. The film lays out the mechanics of how sanctions-evading procurement actually works: the front companies, the banking workarounds, the middlemen who move restricted goods across borders without ever appearing to break the law themselves. What emerges is less a portrait of a criminal mastermind than a case study in how international sanctions regimes can identify a target precisely and still fail to reach him.