US announces seizing plane belonging to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro

It is not expected to take off again anytime soon. The United States announced that it had seized a plane belonging to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, due to alleged violations of American sanctions, on Monday, September 2.

“This morning, the Justice Department seized a plane that we believe was illegally purchased for $13 million through a shell company and smuggled out of the United States for use by Nicolas Maduro and his clique.”Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. The aircraft, a Dassault Falcon 900EX, was seized in the Dominican Republic and transferred to Florida.

The seizure is permitted by an executive order signed in August 2019, under Republican President Donald Trump, which prohibits any person in the United States from conducting transactions with anyone who has “directly or indirectly acted for or on behalf of the Government of Venezuela”the ministry recalled.

The seizure of the plane comes as the United States and other countries recently opposed the re-election of Nicolas Maduro at the end of July. A vote validated by the Supreme Court but which the opposition claims to have won. “Mr. Maduro and his proxies falsified the results of the July 28 presidential election, falsely claimed victory, and carried out widespread repression to maintain power by force.”a White House National Security Council spokesman said Monday, adding that the seizure constituted “an important step for Maduro to continue to suffer the consequences of his bad governance”.

In March 2020, the US Justice Department announced the indictment of Nicolas Maduro and other senior Venezuelan officials and offered a bounty of up to $15 million for information leading to the arrest of the socialist president, in power since 2013. Nicolas Maduro and these officials were accused of having allied themselves with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), “to flood the United States with cocaine”.