Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s plane seized by US

In the latest episode of tensions between the United States and Venezuela, the American authorities announced on Monday, September 2, that they had seized the plane of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro due to alleged violations of American sanctions. The aircraft, a Dassault Falcon 900EX, was seized in the Dominican Republic in the morning and transferred to Florida (southeast of the United States).

“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.

“Venezuela denounces before the international community that once again, the authorities of the United States of America, in a repeated criminal practice that can only be described as an act of piracy, have illegally confiscated an aircraft used by the President of the Republic.”wrote the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Dominican Republic, for its part, stressed that it had not participated in the investigation conducted by Washington. Dominican authorities have ” only “ answered to “an international request for mutual legal assistance”Dominican Foreign Minister Roberto Alvarez told reporters, adding that the plane was in his country before the seizure. “for maintenance purposes”.

“Large-scale repression to maintain power”

In August 2019, under the presidency of Republican Donald Trump, the American executive branch issued a decree prohibiting any person in the United States from carrying out transactions with anyone having “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, like much of the international community, recently opposed the decision by Venezuela’s Supreme Court to validate the re-election of Nicolas Maduro, in a vote at the end of July that 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 in this context, 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 senior officials were accused of having allied themselves with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). “to flood the United States with cocaine”.