The US Department of Justice announced in a press release on Monday, September 2, the seizure in the Dominican Republic of a device belonging to the Venezuelan leader, in a tense context linked to the contested re-election of the socialist at the end of July.
This is the latest episode in the high tensions between the United States and Venezuela. In a statement on Monday, September 2, Washington announced that it had seized a plane belonging to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro due to alleged violations of American sanctions.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.“The plane, a Dassault Falcon 900EX, was seized in the Dominican Republic and transferred to Florida,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland.
In August 2019, under the presidency of Republican Donald Trump, the American executive branch published a decree prohibiting any person in the United States from carrying out transactions with anyone who has “directly or indirectly acted for or on behalf of the Government of Venezuela“, recalled the ministry. The seizure of this plane comes at a time when the United States, like a large part of the international community, recently opposed the decision of the Supreme Court of Venezuela to validate the re-election of Nicolas Maduro in a vote held at the end of July that the opposition claims to have won.
“The consequences of its bad governance,” according to Washington
«Mr. Maduro and his proxies falsified the results of the July 28 presidential election, falsely claimed victory, and waged 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 Department of Justice announced the indictment of the head of state 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».
