The United States on Monday seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s plane in the Dominican Republic and flew the jet to Florida, saying it acted over violation of US sanctions.
United States officials moved to take the aircraft, a Dassault Falcon 900EX private jet used by Maduro and members of his government, with the Justice Department saying the plane was “illegally purchased”.
“The Justice Department seized an aircraft we allege was illegally purchased for US$13 million through a shell company and smuggled out of the United States for use by Nicolas Maduro and his cronies,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
Aircraft tracking site Flightradar24 showed that the jet flew from Santo Domingo to Fort Lauderdale on Monday morning.
READ ALSO: Venezuela’s Supreme Court certifies Maduro’s claims that he won presidential election
Venezuela’s government on Monday slammed the seizure as “piracy”.
“Once again, the authorities of the United States of America are engaged in a criminal practice that cannot be described as anything other than piracy,” the foreign ministry in Caracas said in a statement.
The US says that in late 2022 and early 2023, individuals affiliated with Maduro allegedly used a Caribbean-based shell company to conceal their involvement in the illegal purchase of the jet.
The aircraft was then illegally exported from the United States to Venezuela through the Caribbean in April 2023.
Since May 2023, the plane has flown almost exclusively to and from a military base in Venezuela.
Anthony Salisbury, special agent in charge at the Homeland Security Investigations Miami office, said “this plane was predominantly utilised by Nicolas Maduro on numerous state visits”.
Also on Monday, Venezuela’s attorney general’s office was granted an arrest warrant for opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, after Gonzalez Urrutia failed to respond to three summons to testify about an opposition website that published detailed results of the country’s disputed presidential election.
The website is being investigated for “usurping the function” of the electoral authority, which says Maduro won the July 28 contest but has not published detailed results.
The court, the prosecutor’s office said on Instagram, had granted its request for a warrant for Gonzalez Urrutia for “serious crimes”.
The office had earlier published its request to the court on social media, in which it listed the alleged crimes that stem from the opposition’s insistence that Maduro and his allies stole the presidential vote.
Venezuela’s national electoral authority and its top court have said Maduro was the victor of the election with just over half of the votes, but tallies posted by the opposition show a resounding victory for Gonzalez Urrutia.
The opposition, some Western countries and international bodies such as a United Nations panel of experts have said the vote was not transparent and demanded publication of full tallies, with some outright decrying fraud.
Ruling party officials including Maduro have accused the opposition of stoking violence after the South American country was rocked by protests when Maduro was declared the winner, with 27 people killed, at least 192 wounded and more than 2,400 people arrested.
Attorney General Tarek Saab has launched criminal investigations into opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, Gonzalez Urrutia and the website where the opposition posted its copies of ballot box-level vote tallies.
The opposition claims it won by a landslide and that it has the voting records to prove it.
The leftist Maduro government, brushing off accusations of authoritarianism, has resisted international pressure to release vote tally numbers to back up its claim of victory.
“Maduro and his representatives’ have tampered with the results of the July 28 presidential election, falsely claimed victory, and carried out widespread repression to maintain power by force,” a US National Security Council spokesperson said.
The seizure of the plane “is an important step to ensure that Maduro continues to feel the consequences from his misgovernance of Venezuela”, they added.
The United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries have refused to recognise Maduro as having won without seeing detailed voting results.
Since 2005, Washington has imposed sanctions on Venezuela that target individuals and entities “that have engaged in criminal, antidemocratic, or corrupt actions”, according to a Congressional briefing document.
“In response to increasing human rights abuses and corruption by the government of Nicolas Maduro, in power since 2013, the Trump Administration expanded US sanctions to include financial sanctions, sectoral sanctions, and sanctions on the government.”
(AP)