They simply had financial problems and had been trying to solve them by selling the lithium and plutonium. In all the controversy over the propriety of the BND's actions, however, an important point was lost. Even as amateurs, the three men succeeded in obtaining a significant amount of high-grade plutonium. The third was a Czech nuclear physicist, Jaroslav Vagner, who had not been officially employed in the nuclear industry for several years. The number of smuggling cases in Germany, at least, has declined since these highly publicized arrests.
Traffickers appear to be going elsewhere.
Some have gone through Switzerland and Austria and into Italy. More may be taking the routes to the south through the Central Asian republics and the Black Sea. As former International Atomic Energy Agency inspector David Kay has pointed out, these paths in effect reverse those used by the KGB to smuggle Western goods into the former Soviet Union. Border controls in these areas are much weaker than those going into western Europe, and the potential clients are closer. Some of the seizures in Germany and Turkey make it fairly clear that outlaw states such as Iran may in fact be looking for high-quality nuclear material.