Michael Byers holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia.Guerman Goutorov could spend a decade in jail. His privately held company, Streit Group, is alleged to have violated United Nations arms embargoes in Libya and Sudan – violations that, if proven, would constitute crimes under Canadian law.
Mr. Goutorov is a former Russian police officer who immigrated to Canada around the time the Soviet Union collapsed. In 1992, he started a small business in the garage of his Toronto home, retrofitting off-the-shelf cars and trucks with bulletproof glass and armoured plating. Today, Streit Group has plants in Canada, India, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United States. It sells thousands of retrofitted vehicles each year, ranging from bulletproofed limousines to six-wheeled trucks able to withstand land mines.Although Streit Group is divided into subsidiaries, Mr. Goutorov retains …