Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, commenting on the confiscation of his plane in the Dominican Republic by US authorities, called Head of State Luis Abinader a bandit and a thief.
“I was left without a plane. This is the thief, the president of the Dominican Republic, Abinader, a bandit and a thief. The people of the Dominican Republic will hold him accountable in due time. There is no need to pretend that it is not me. I spoke to him many times, quite a lot, face to face.” – said Maduro during a government meeting.
CNN reported on September 2 that US authorities seized Maduro’s plane in the Dominican Republic and transported it to Florida, determining that its acquisition was allegedly done to circumvent sanctions. The Venezuelan government called the seizure of the plane an act of piracy and said the US pressured Dominican Republic authorities to become “complices in the crime.”
As explained by the head of the Dominican Foreign Ministry Roberto AlvarezIn May, prosecutors in his country received a request for international legal cooperation in the seizure and impoundment of a Dassault Falcon 900 aircraft as part of a criminal investigation into smuggling and money laundering by the U.S. Department of Justice. Neither the Dominican government nor prosecutors participated in the U.S. investigation, according to Alvarez, and acted in accordance with the court order.
Dominican President Luis Abinader later stressed in a press conference that the confiscated plane was not registered as belonging to the Venezuelan government and “was listed as belonging to a certain Roberto.”
The presidential plane became the second Venezuelan aircraft confiscated by the United States: in 2022, a Boeing 747 belonging to the Venezuelan company Empresa de Transporte Aéreocargo del Sur (Emtrasur) was seized at Argentina’s Ezeiza airport. Earlier this year, a local court decided to transfer the plane to the United States, after which it was flown to Florida. According to Venezuelan media, the plane was transported under the guise of a military flight, which circumvented the lack of permission to fly by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in various airspaces. The confiscated plane was destroyed.
