2024-09-04 10:06:11
The United States announced Monday that it had seized a plane belonging to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro that was in the Dominican Republic and had taken it to Florida, alleging that it violated U.S. sanctions.
“The Department of Justice seized an aircraft that was illegally acquired for $13 million through a shell company and smuggled out of the United States for use by Nicolás Maduro and his cronies,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
Aircraft tracking website Flight Radar 24 showed the plane, a Dassault Falcon 900EX private jet, flew from Santo Domingo to Fort Lauderdale on Monday morning.
Venezuela has been in the midst of a serious political crisis since the July 28 elections in which Maduro was declared the winner for a third six-year term.
The opposition claims it won by an overwhelming majority and has voting records to prove it.
Maduro’s leftist government, which rejects accusations of authoritarianism, has not released a vote count to legitimize its victory despite intense international pressure.
“Maduro and his representatives have manipulated the results of the July 28 presidential election, falsely claimed victory, and carried out widespread repression to maintain power by force,” a spokesman for the US National Security Council said.
The seizure of the plane “is an important step to ensure that Maduro continues to feel the consequences of his misgovernance of Venezuela,” he added.
The United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries have refused to recognise Maduro as the winner without first seeing the results of the vote in detail.
The violence that occurred during the post-election protests left 27 dead and at least 192 injured.
Since 2005, Washington has imposed sanctions on individuals and entities in Venezuela “that have engaged in criminal, anti-democratic or corrupt actions,” according to a US congressional document.
“In response to increasing human rights abuses and corruption by the government of Nicolás Maduro, in power since 2013, the Trump administration expanded US sanctions to include financial, sector-specific and government-specific sanctions,” according to the same source.
