Hot Money · Pushkin Industries

From The Financial Times: The Broker

February 17, 2026·37 min·3 clips

Ukraine paid $162 million in advance to Somrendyke's company for desperately needed artillery shells, then alleged Regulus used the money to buy Bosnian factories instead of delivering ammunition.

Pretis begins with machinery and heat. In a narrow valley on the northern edge of Sarajevo, Cold War-era machines still hammer glowing steel for artillery shells from a European land war that never came. Then money slips in. In spring 2024, Sitco Acquisition, LLC, a new American company with no website, no public staff, and no visible footprint beyond a U.S. post office box, buys into Pretis and Binas. The trades barely register, but on the Sarajevo Stock Exchange they make Sitco the largest private shareholder in both factories, behind only the Bosnian government. So the question is ownership. The trail moves through corporate filings and into Samrundyke's world: selling holsters with his father at gun shows, then supplying Soviet-caliber weapons for U.S. operations. His pitch was speed. When SOCOM needed contractors in 2014 who could source weapons for rebels fighting in Syria, he said Regulus could deliver in less than 50 days. Bigger firms were slower. That edge put him on a Soviet-built Ilyushin Il-76 in Eastern Europe, watching loadmasters push crates through an open ramp as a covert war came closer. He wanted the first flight. The line he crossed was more than a border. It carried him from small-town broker into the machinery of modern American war. Bulgaria makes the picture colder. Court-filed SOCOM language describes sensitive work that might reach the top-secret level, while contractors trained around Soviet-made anti-tank weapons before heading toward Jordan. The spreadsheet logic sticks. Syria, Yemen, or Ukraine become columns. Bombs turn into stock codes to buy, finance, and ship. War changes the customer list. Governments find him useful, the industry calls that success, and the listener is left with the worst part: paperwork can make all of this sound almost normal.

As heard by us

A sharp, grounded look at how weapons turn into logistics, finance, and leverage.

The Broker starts in a Bosnian valley at Pretis, where old Cold War machines still hammer glowing steel, then moves through Sarajevo, Virginia Beach, Bulgaria, and the machinery of covert war.

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Follow one quiet share purchase into the business of covert war.

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