The US has stolen the official airplane of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro under claims that it was purchased by violating US sanctions, US officials told CNN on Monday.
The US officials described the plane as the equivalent of Air Force One and said it was taken by the US from the Dominican Republic and flown to Florida. The Justice Department claimed the plane was purchased in Flordia and exported to Venezuela in April 2023.
“This sends a message all the way up to the top,” one of the US officials boasted to CNN. “Seizing the foreign head of state’s plane is unheard-of for criminal matters. We’re sending a clear message here that no one is above the law, no one is above the reach of US sanctions.”
The Justice Department said in a press release that it “announced the seizure of a Dassault Falcon 900EX aircraft owned and operated for the benefit of Nicolas Maduro and persons affiliated with him in Venezuela.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland claimed the aircraft was “illegally purchased for $13 million through a shell company and smuggled out of the United States for use by Nicolas Maduro and his cronies.
The move marks an escalation in the US campaign against Maduro, who the US has been trying to unseat from power for years. In 2019, the US rejected the result of Venezuela’s 2018 elections and recognized opposition figure Juan Guaido as acting president, who led a failed coup attempt against Maduro and eventually fell out of favor of the US-backed opposition. The failed coup attempt came with crippling sanctions that amounted to an economic embargo.
Last month, the Biden administration announced it rejected the results of the 2024 election and recognized Edmundo González Urrutia, who was on the ballot for the opposition, as the winner. Venezuela’s election authorities declared Maduro as the winner, but the opposition disputed the results, accused the government of election manipulation, and also claimed victory.
