Meet the world’s most elusive arms dealer

By Christoph Giesen, Philipp Grüll, Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer. Karl Lee, a shady Chinese arms dealer, supplies the bulk of material and equipment for Iran’s ballistic-missile programme, America’s State Department avers. “The Chinese Phantom” weaves together the story of that illicit arms network, America’s frustrated efforts to put pressure on China to shut it down and the geopolitics of Iranian missile technology and Sino-American competition. Two of the authors won the Pulitzer prize for their reporting on the Panama papers, a series of leaks of corporate and financial records published in 2016; they draw on that work to unravel parts of Mr Lee’s byzantine shell companies. “Lee ranks so highly on the CIA’s wanted list”, the authors implausibly argue at one point, “that special forces…etch his face into their memories the moment they start their training.” The bigger issue is that it is a whodunnit without a satisfying ending.