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The U.S. seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s official airplane and flew it to America on Monday, marking a major escalation in the standoff between Washington and Caracas just weeks after the Biden administration accused Mr. Maduro of essentially stealing the country’s July presidential election.
The Justice Department said it seized the plane — a $13 million Dassault Falcon 900 — while it was in the Dominican Republic. It was flown to Florida on Monday at the request of the Biden administration “based on violations of U.S. export control and sanctions laws.”
CNN first reported the seizure earlier Monday.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said the plane was bought illegally through a shell company and smuggled out of the U.S. in 2023. Since then, the Justice Department said it has been “flown almost exclusively to and from a military base in Venezuela and has been used for the benefit of Maduro and his representatives, including to transport Maduro on visits to other countries.”
Mr. Garland said the seizure is an example of America’s commitment to enforce its economic sanctions.
“The department will continue to pursue those who violate our sanctions and export controls to prevent them from using American resources to undermine the national security of the United States,” Mr. Garland said in a Justice Department statement.
Seizing the official airplane of a foreign head of state is rare. The U.S. is expected to pursue formal forfeiture of the aircraft, meaning Mr. Maduro’s government can file an official petition to get it back.
The Justice Department said authorities in the Dominican Republic assisted in the seizure.
Mr. Maduro has long been at odds with U.S. law enforcement.
In March 2020, the U.S. charged Mr. Maduro and other Venezuelan officials with narco-terrorism, corruption, drug trafficking and other offenses. Then-Attorney General William Barr said at the time that Mr. Maduro and other officials tried “to use the U.S. banking system to move their illicit proceeds from South America” and that they were responsible for “tons of cocaine” entering the U.S.
The charges against Mr. Maduro came at a unique moment. A little more than a year earlier, in January 2019, the U.S. and some of its allies formally recognized Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, not Mr. Maduro, as the rightful president of Venezuela. But Mr. Maduro never lost his grip on power, and the gambit to install Mr. Guaido as president ultimately failed.
More recently, the Biden administration argued that Mr. Maduro, the political protege of longtime Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, appears to have falsified July’s presidential election results. The U.S. said it believes that former diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez, not Mr. Maduro, rightfully won the election.
Mr. Maduro’s government said he received more than 50% of the vote, compared to about 44% for Mr. Gonzalez. However, government agencies failed to produce the physical vote tally sheets to confirm those numbers.
An Associated Press evaluation of voting sheets found that Mr. Gonzalez received 6.89 million votes, nearly half a million more than the government says Mr. Maduro won. The tabulations show Mr. Maduro received just 3.13 million votes.
That’s a massive discrepancy from the official government figures, and that discrepancy is what has led the Biden administration and other governments around the world to reject the official results.
It’s not clear whether seizing Mr. Maduro’s plane will have any impact on the election controversy or the future of the Venezuelan presidency.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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