(Buenos Aires) Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday called his Argentine counterpart Javier Milei a “bandit”, three days after the United States announced that it had completed the seizure of a Venezuelan plane held in Buenos Aires for a year and a half .
“They stole our plane […]. The bandit Milei stole the plane from Venezuela, Javier Milei, the hero of the ultra-right,” Mr. Maduro said in a televised statement.
PHOTO YARA NARDI, REUTERS
Argentine President Javier Milei
“He pretends to be crazy, he is crazy, or both,” he added, referring to the Argentine leader elected last November.
The Boeing 747 cargo plane of the Venezuelan company Emtrasur was grounded in June 2022 in Argentina after arriving from Mexico, with a load of automobile parts.
PHOTO SEBASTIAN BORSERO, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The Boeing 747 at the center of Nicolas Maduro’s accusations
The aircraft was sold in October 2021 to Emtrasur, a subsidiary of the Venezuelan public airline Conviasa, by the Iranian Mahan Air, in violation of American sanctions, the American Department of Justice justified in early August 2022, relaying to the authorities Argentines a request for seizure from a court in the District of Columbia.
Caracas and Tehran protested U.S. attempts to seize the plane, but an Argentine judge in February ordered it handed over to the United States.
The 19 crew members were detained – although free – in Argentina and then gradually allowed to leave the country, as the investigation progressed.
Among them were four Iranians, including one suspected by Washington of being a former executive of the Revolutionary Guards and their Al-Quds unit, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States.
“The seized U.S.-built plane was transferred by a sanctioned Iranian airline in a transaction that violated U.S. export control laws and directly benefited the Revolutionary Guard Corps Islamic State, which is a terrorist organization,” said Deputy Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen, quoted Monday in a press release from the US Department of Justice.
“Mahan Air—known for transporting weapons and fighters for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah—violated our export restrictions […]. (The plane) now belongs to the American government,” said Matthew S. Axelrod, undersecretary for export control.
Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry said it would “take all necessary measures” to have the plane returned to its “rightful owner.”