13-year-old leaves Dhaka for US, runs a global spy network four decades later

Masudul Rony Wahid, alias Ron, left Dhaka for the US in 1982 at the age of 13, and now runs a private spy network serving governments, defence complexes, and corporate entities around the world.

Thrilling and unreal as it may sound for a Bangladeshi immigrant, validated records provided by the Arcanum Global, Rony’s company with multiple Western headquarters, confirm the claim.

And all the services he and his company provide, including hiring former spymasters from the West and Israel, helping a dictator track alleged illicit money of a self-exiled opponent, helping mediate Ukraine peace talks, and buying a special operations training unit that once served the Pentagon, are legal – unless one learns to read between the lines.

Arcanum company filings in London mention his date of birth as April 1969, and his departure from Bangladesh around 1982. His birthplace, family and school: no document or testimony identifies them.

In 2013, while enjoying a polo match in the UK, he told a Gulf Business reporter that he had come to America from Bangladesh when he was thirteen years old with nothing more than $100 and a one-way ticket.

There is no credible record or media report on how he managed his way into the United States Senate panel on “foreign policy and defence,” or how he became the chairperson of an American investment company with $10 billion-plus in assets.

‘Opaque dealings’

According allegations registered in US court filings, Rony and his company secretly supplied intelligence to FBI over reported Russian ties to President Donald Trump’s team before the Republican’s first election in 2016 – after Rony’s corporate espionage alliance with a Trump aide fell apart.

Rony’s another company, Patriot Defense Group, since he purchased it last year, has offices in the Polish city of Rzeszów, which serves as a transit point for Western arms supplies to Ukraine, and also in Kyiv, advertising an “unmanned systems unit.” According to media accounts, he only served as an “unofficial adviser” for Ukraine in the peace talks with Russia.

On 10 July this year, he won “The Order of Merit III” from the Ukraine president, but the particular contribution to Ukraine’s cause that got him the honour remains unknown.

The Ukraine presidency did not name him or Arcanum in the decree and only identifies the Bangladeshi award recipient as an “investor.” Michael McCaul, the US lawmaker who won “The Order of Merit, II,” with Rony next to him, took to his personal blog after receiving the award, but mentioned the spymaster hirer only as "a private security detail of former US servicemen."

Rony’s engagements with former Kazakhstan dictator, Nursultan Nazarbayev, are possibly the only “provable accounts” investigative reporters have got their hands on.

And indeed, reporters from the UK, Switzerland, France and elsewhere in the West have spent extensive time, trying to uncover Rony’s dealings behind-the-scenes.

Despite the efforts, he remains a mystery, and his work with Western intelligence, defence and political agencies are mentioned “in a few words” by himself, with no other verifiable record available.

The Arcanum Global website says he was "a policy analyst on arms control", then "a professional staff member" in the United States Senate on foreign policy and defence, then "an advisor to the Bush-Cheney Transition team" in 2000.

It says he chairs an unnamed American investment company "with over $10 billion in assets". No senator, committee, employer or year is given. No one but Wahid has confirmed these claims.

The UK-based Financial Times (FT) reported in 2017 that people who dealt with him said he "peppers conversation with hints" of past intelligence work, though the company biography "makes no claim of any formal role". One American intelligence operative called him "stone cold CIA".

A former Western spy who had heard Rony talk was unconvinced: "the way he talks, you can tell it would never have been like that."