U.S. seizes Venezuelan president’s plane, says it was purchased illegally

The U.S. government has seized a luxury jet used by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro that officials say was illegally purchased through a shell company and smuggled out of the United States in violation of sanctions and export control laws.

The Dassault Falcon 900EX was seized in the Dominican Republic and transferred to the custody of federal officials in Florida, the Justice Department said Monday. The plane landed at Ft. Lauderdale Executive Airport shortly before noon Monday, according to flight tracking websites.

U.S. officials say associates of the Venezuelan leader in late 2022 and early 2023 used a Caribbean-based shell company to hide their involvement in the purchase of the plane, valued at the time at $13 million, from a company in Florida. The plane was then exported from the U.S. to Venezuela, through the Caribbean, in April 2023 in a transaction meant to circumvent an executive order that bars U.S. persons from business transactions with representatives of Maduro’s government.

The plane, registered to San Marino, was widely used by Maduro for foreign travel, including in trips earlier this year to Guyana and Cuba. It was also involved in a December swap on a Caribbean airstrip of several Americans jailed in Venezuela for a close Maduro ally, Alex Saab, imprisoned in the U.S. on money laundering charges.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement the aircraft had been smuggled out of the U.S. for use by “Maduro and his cronies.”

Venezuela’s government acknowledged the seizure in a statement Monday. It characterized the U.S. government’s move as “a repeated criminal practice that cannot be described as anything other than piracy.”

State media footage from a December visit to Saint Vincent and the