September 3, 2024
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Deputy Cilia Flores, leaving the jet seized by the US. Photo: RedRadioVE
The United States again stole a Venezuelan aircraft, the Dassault Falcon 900EX with license plate T7-ESPRT, this time in the Dominican Republic. The operation, led by the Department of Justice, in its statement on the event reports that the aircraft was transferred to the Southern District of the state of Florida, to the city of Fort Lauderdale.
The Department of Commerce and the Department of Homeland Security were also involved in the investigation and the illegal seizure of the vehicle.
The U.S. judicial entity also alleges that, at the request of the United States to the Dominican Republic, the seizure was based on “violations of U.S. export controls and sanction laws”.
This is the second case of illegal seizure of Venezuelan aircraft this year, following the theft of the Boeing 747-300M, owned by the Venezuelan company Emtrasur, with the support of the Argentine government on February 12, which concluded a two-year long process of seizure of the Venezuelan asset.
Regarding the Dassault Falcon 900EX, the United States argues that the action is covered by Executive Order 13 884, issued by then-President Donald Trump in 2019, which “prohibits U.S. persons from engaging in transactions with persons who have acted or purported to act directly or indirectly for or on behalf of the government of Venezuela, including as members of the Maduro regime.”
The plane, according to the Justice Department, was purchased by the Venezuelan State through a company in a third country, being that of U.S. origin. According to the AP report, the “third country” would be St. Vincent and the Grenadines -whose government is Venezuela’s ally in the Caribbean.
In turn, says the statement, “the Department of Commerce has also imposed export controls for items destined, in whole or in part, to a Venezuelan military or military intelligence end-user”. According to the judicial entity, the aircraft “has 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.”
In addition, and this is not a minor fact, the Department of Justice charged the Venezuelan president with alleged and false charges in March 2020, the origin of a sinister arrest warrant against him.
This is another maneuver directly targeting President Nicolás Maduro, in a context of disregard for Venezuelan institutions after his electoral triumph on July 28.
Although the theft of the plane is a material fact, it operates on the perceptive side at a time when the process of regime change of the sector represented by María Corina Machado is in a phase of little attention at the international level.
In this way, the United States seems to use the resource of illegal sanctions to carry out actions to revive the coup agenda.
But in addition, the fact presents extra shades of criminality since the United States maintains the essential objective of the sanctions against Venezuela: the pressure for the continuous attrition around the persecution of state assets abroad.
A process that had had an aggressive phase prior to 2024 and that Washington resumes specifically with an asset that was located abroad, in territory politically co-opted by the US influence, a unique opportunity to execute the illegal confiscation under the pretext of the sanctions program, after having spent most of its ammunition in the economic, financial and commercial blockade for more than five years, an initiative led by the Treasury Department during the Trump era.
However, the Bloomberg article published on Monday, September 2, reports that Joe Biden’s administration will announce the imposition of individual sanctions on 15 “officials affiliated with Maduro who it says ‘obstructed the holding of free and fair presidential elections,’ according to documents seen by Bloomberg.” The move is expected to occur this week. Double move: the theft of the plane and the imposition of individual sanctions as an effective measure in the post-28J context.
On the other hand, such a criminal theft of the plane could be an immediate precedent for the kind of decisions the U.S. government could take on Venezuela.
Indeed, this theft signifies the first major post-July 28 step by U.S. authorities against the Venezuelan state in general, and President Nicolás Maduro in particular.
Another chapter of criminal policy
Last July, in the framework of the presidential elections, the Venezuelan government suspended commercial flights to the Dominican Republic, as well as ordered the withdrawal of its ambassador, along with those of six other countries, “in view of the interfering actions and statements (…) trying to reissue the failed and defeated Lima Group”.
A resolution of sovereignty that had its replica in the acquiescence of the Dominican government to carry out the theft of the Dassault Falcon 900EX.
In view of the event, the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry issued a communiqué in which it describes as “piracy” the operation of the United States, whose government “has illegally confiscated an aircraft that has been used by the President of the Republic, justifying itself in the coercive measures that it unilaterally and illegally imposes around the world”.
The official text also characterizes the maneuver as “an example of the alleged ‘rule-based order’, which, disregarding International Law, intends to establish the law of the strongest, create rules that adjust to its interests and execute them with total impunity”.
Unilateral coercive measures as a “criminal policy” – words of the Foreign Ministry – continue to operate without restrictions in spite of the narrative that considers the licensing regime issued by the Treasury Department as a relief or lifting of sanctions, when it is really a particular management of these in view of the energy and geopolitical needs of the United States.
To this must be added the fact that, by putting pressure on the Dominican Republic, the United States is interfering in and undermining Venezuela’s relations with other countries in the region. A purpose that it has tried to replicate with other governments such as that of Lula da Silva and Gustavo Petro.
The island nation was a signatory to the Petrocaribe agreement in 2005, however, according to Venezuela’s tensions with the United States, the Dominican government on duty has leaned towards the resolutions of the North American nation: for example, in 2018 Santo Domingo disowned the results of the presidential elections won by Maduro, followed by the suspension of diplomatic relations. So there is an immediate precedent of what happened after July 28.
Now, with the act of piracy of another Venezuelan asset, a new chapter is written in the saga of sanctions against Venezuela, escalating and straining to the limit the relations with the Dominican Republic and, therefore, with the United States.
Source: Mision Verdad, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English