The United States has seized Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro’s airplane after determining that its acquisition was in violation of US sanctions, among other criminal issues. The US flew the aircraft to Florida on Monday, according to two US officials.
It’s the latest development in what has long been a frosty relationship between the US and Venezuela, and its seizure in the Dominican Republic marks an escalation as the US continues to investigate what it regards as corrupt practices by Venezuela’s government.
“This sends a message all the way up to the top,” one of the US officials told CNN. “Seizing the foreign head of state’s plane is unheard-of for criminal matters. We’re sending a clear message here that no one is above the law, no one is above the reach of US sanctions.”
The plane has been described by officials as Venezuela’s equivalent to Air Force One and it has been pictured in previous state visits by Maduro around the world.
The Dominican Republic’s President Luis Abinader said the plane seized by the US on Monday was not registered under the name of the Venezuelan government, but rather under “the name of an individual.”
Foreign Minister of the Dominican Republic Roberto Álvarez said the country’s Attorney General’s Office received an order last May from a national court to “immobilize” the plane. The US had requested it be immobilized so they could search it for “evidence and objects linked to fraud activities, smuggling of goods for illicit activities and money laundering,” he said.
In a statement, US Attorney General Merrick Garland said that “the Justice Department seized an aircraft 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 cronies.”
The plane, a Dassault Falcon 900EX, was purchased from a company in Florida, the Justice Department said, and was illegally exported in April 2023 from the United States to Venezuela through the Caribbean. It was used for Maduro’s international travels, and flew “almost exclusively to and from a military base in Venezuela,” according to the Justice Department.
Records show that the plane’s last registered flight was in March, flying from Caracas to the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo.
The Venezuelan government described the seizure as “piracy” in a statement on Monday, and accused Washington of escalating “aggression” toward Maduro’s government following a contested presidential election this July.
“Once again, the authorities of the USA, in a recurring criminal practice that could not be labeled anything but piracy, have illegally seized an aircraft that has been used by the president of the Republic, justifying its action in coercive measures that, illegally and unilaterally, they impose around the world,” it said.
“The United States has already demonstrated that it uses its economic and military power to intimidate and pressure states such as the Dominican Republic to serve as accomplices in its criminal acts. This is an example of the supposed ‘rules-based order’, which, disregarding international law, seeks to establish the law of the strongest,” it said.
