The United States has seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s plane after determining that its purchase violated US sanctions, among other “criminal matters”. The plane, seized in the Dominican Republic, was flown to Florida on Monday, two US officials said.
This sends a message all the way to the top,’ one of the US officials told CNN. The seizure of a foreign head of state’s plane is unheard of in criminal cases. We are sending a clear message here that no one is above the law, no one is above the reach of US sanctions,’ a US official told CNN.
The plane, described by officials as Venezuela’s equivalent of Air Force One, has also been seen during Maduro’s previous state visits around the world.
Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader said the plane seized by the US on Monday was registered ‘in the name of an individual’ and not the Venezuelan government.
Dominican Foreign Minister Roberto Álvarez said the country’s attorney general’s office had received an order from a national court last May to ‘immobilise’ the plane.
The minister said the US had requested the aircraft’s immobilisation in order to search for ‘evidence and objects related to fraudulent activities, smuggling of goods for illegal activities and money laundering’.
The Department of Justice has seized an aircraft that we allege was illegally purchased for $13 million through a shell company and smuggled out of the US for use by Nicolás Maduro and his cronies,’ US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
The Department of Justice alleged that the aircraft, a Dassault Falcon 900EX, was purchased from a company in Florida and illegally exported from the US to Venezuela via the Caribbean in April 2023.
According to the Justice Department, the plane was used for Maduro’s international travel and “flew almost exclusively to and from a military base in Venezuela”.
The aircraft was seized for violations of U.S. sanctions against Venezuela and other criminal matters related to this aircraft that we are still investigating,’ Anthony Salisbury, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations, told CNN.
A senior official in the Dominican Republic told CNN that Maduro’s plane was undergoing maintenance on Dominican territory at the time it was seized by US authorities.
The source added that the government had no record of Maduro’s private plane being in the country until it was seized.
According to one of the US officials, US authorities worked closely with the Dominican Republic, which notified Venezuela that the plane had been seized.
According to US officials, several federal agencies were involved in the seizure of the plane, including Homeland Security Investigations, Commerce agents, the Bureau of Industry and Security, and the Department of Justice.
Records show that the plane’s last registered flight was from Caracas to the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo, in March.
In a statement on Monday, the Venezuelan government described the seizure as ‘piracy’ and accused Washington of stepping up its ‘aggression’ against Maduro’s government following July’s presidential election.
Once again, in a recurring criminal practice that can only be described as piracy, the US authorities have illegally seized an aircraft used by the President of the Republic, justifying their action with the coercive measures they have illegally and unilaterally imposed around the world,’ the statement said.
The US has shown that it uses its economic and military power to intimidate and pressure states like the Dominican Republic to serve as ‘accomplices in criminal acts’, Venezuela said, adding that what had happened was ‘an example of the so-called ‘rules-based order’, which seeks to establish the law of the strongest in defiance of international law’.
