The US Justice Department announced on Monday that a plane used by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was seized and brought to US territory after determining that its acquisition violated export control laws and sanctions. The Venezuelan government condemned the action.
“This morning, the Department of Justice seized an aircraft that we allege was illegally purchased for $13 million through a shell company and smuggled out of the United States for use by Nicolás Maduro and his associates,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, according to a Department of Justice press release.
The plane, a Dassault Falcon 900EX registered T7-ESPRT, which according to US authorities was flying “almost exclusively to and from a military base in Venezuela” and which the Venezuelan president used to visit other countries, was detained in the Dominican Republic and transferred on Monday to the US. The aircraft landed at the airport in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, shortly before noon on Monday, according to flight tracking websites.
The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry described the seizure as a “repeated criminal practice” and said that the US intimidates and pressures states such as the Dominican Republic to serve as “accomplices in its criminal acts.”
In a statement, the foreign ministry added that the country reserves the right to take “any legal action” to repair the damage and said that it is part of an “escalation of actions” against the government, following the elections of July 28.
According to US officials, between late 2022 and early 2023 the Venezuelan leader’s associates used a shell company based in the Caribbean to conceal their involvement in the purchase of the plane, valued at the time at $13 million, from a company in Florida.
The aircraft was exported from the United States to Venezuela, via the Caribbean, in April 2023 in a transaction intended to circumvent an executive order prohibiting Americans from conducting business transactions with the Maduro regime.
The federal prosecutor for the Southern District of Florida, Markenzy Lapointe, said that the operation was the result of “planning, coordination and execution” by the United States with “invaluable assistance” from the Dominican authorities.
“Smuggled plane”
Matthew S. Axelrod, Under Secretary for Export Control at the Department of Commerce, said that “aircraft illegally acquired in the United States for the benefit of sanctioned Venezuelan officials cannot simply fly off into the sunset.”
“No matter how fancy the private jet or how powerful the officials, we will work tirelessly with our partners here and around the world to identify and return any aircraft illegally smuggled out of the United States,” he continued.
A U.S. National Security Council official said Monday that the Justice Department’s action is an “important step toward ensuring that Maduro continues to feel the consequences of his misrule in Venezuela.”
The official said that last month Maduro and his representatives “altered” the results of the presidential elections of July 28 and carried out a “widespread repression to maintain power “by force.”
“The United States, in coordination with our partners, is working to ensure that the will of the Venezuelan people, as expressed in the July 28 elections, is respected,” the official said.
Venezuela’s electoral authority, which has not released detailed results more than a month later despite demands from the international community, declared Maduro the winner of the presidential election, but the opposition presented the minutes kept by its witnesses at the voting tables, which would show that the opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, had won with 67% of the votes.
In April of this year, the Venezuelan government accused the US of committing “acts of vandalism” by dismantling an aircraft owned by it that was seized by the US justice system for allegedly violating “sanctions and export laws” and maintaining alleged links to terrorism.
The Boeing 747, registration YV3531, which was operated by the Venezuelan company Emtrasur, a subsidiary of the state-owned Conviasa, and was previously owned by the sanctioned Iranian airline Mahan Air, which the US associates with the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran, was grounded in Argentina since June 2022 and later transferred to US territory.
In August 2019, Executive Order 13884 was issued, prohibiting Americans from engaging in transactions with persons who have acted or purported to act directly or indirectly for or on behalf of the Venezuelan government.
[Con información de Reuters y AP]
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