Nicolas Maduro’s plane seized by US authorities, Venezuela denounces an act of “piracy”

The United States announced Monday that it had seized a plane belonging to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro over alleged violations of U.S. sanctions, the latest in a series of heightened tensions between the two countries. “This morning, the Department of Justice 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 Falcon 900EX, was seized in the Dominican Republic and transferred to Florida (southeast), the statement said.

The Venezuelan authorities, for their part, denounced an act of “piracy”.“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.”writes the Venezuelan ministry.

In August 2019, under the presidency of Republican Donald Trump, the American executive branch issued an executive order prohibiting any person in the United States from conducting transactions with anyone who “directly or indirectly acted for or on behalf of the Government of Venezuela”the ministry recalled.

“Falsified the results”

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 Maduro’s re-election in a vote in late 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. In this context, this seizure constitutes “an important step so that Maduro continues to suffer the consequences of his bad governance”he added.

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”.