Editing Ulster Volunteer Force (section)

===Middle East===
In June 1987, the UVF stole over £325,000 during an armed robbery at a branch of the [[Northern Bank]] in [[Portadown]]. The cash was then [[Money laundering|laundered]] through Swiss banks accounts and other financial institutions in mainland Europe, where "respectable" members of the Unionist business community made in person lodgements.<ref>Taylor, p. 185.</ref> The money was then used to buy an arms shipment from [[List of armed groups in the Lebanese Civil War|Christian militia groups in Lebanon]], that was to be split evenly between the UVF, the [[Ulster Defence Association|UDA]], and [[Ulster Resistance]]. The weapons, which amounted to over 200 [[Vz. 58]] assault rifles, 94 [[Browning Hi-Power]] pistols, 4 [[RPG-7]] rocket launchers and dozens of warheads, over 400 [[RGD-5]] grenades and 30,000 rounds of ammunition arrived at [[Belfast]] docks in December 1987, and was thereafter distributed to the three  loyalist paramilitary groups.<ref name="Sean Boyne 2006. p. 368">Sean Boyne, Gunrunners – The Covert Arms Trail to Ireland, Dublin, O'Brien, 2006. p. 368</ref> Although the arms were sourced in [[Lebanon]], it has been alleged that the ultimate supplier was [[Armscor (South Africa)|Armscor]] in South Africa, who funneled the shipment through a series of middlemen (such as  American arms dealer Douglas Bernhardt) to disguise its true source.<ref>{{Cite news |date=28 August 1989|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1989/08/28/international-arms-merchants-stock-both-sides-in-n-ireland/6a8e61de-2eee-463e-b416-810936eba8dd/|title=INTERNATIONAL ARMS MERCHANTS STOCK BOTH SIDES IN N. IRELAND|newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |access-date=5 November 2024}}</ref> After the cash had been couriered over to Bernhardt's office in [[Geneva]], he was alleged to have then arranged a bank draft to be forwarded to an arms dealer in Beirut, who then sourced the weapons and loaded then into a shipping container labelled as ceramic floor tiles.<ref>{{Cite news |date=15 October 2012|url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/oct/15/northern-ireland-loyalist-shootings-loughinisland|title=Northern Ireland loyalist shootings: one night of carnage, 18 years of silence|newspaper=[[The Guardian]] |access-date=5 November 2024}}</ref> A supposed motive for [[Apartheid South Africa]] to get involved in supplying arms to loyalist paramilitary groups was their attempts to obtain classified [[Starstreak]] surface-to-air missile technology from the [[Short Brothers]] factory in Belfast, evidence of which was uncovered after representatives from Ulster Resistance were arrested in Paris in April 1989, along with Bernhardt and a diplomat from South Africa, while in the possession of stolen missile parts.<ref>{{Cite news |date=30 September 2015|url=https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/foiled-plot-would-have-equipped-the-uvf-and-uda/31569830.html|title=Foiled plot would have equipped the UVF and UDA|newspaper=[[Belfast Telegraph]] |access-date=5 November 2024}}</ref>