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The United States seized the plane after determining there were criminal issues surrounding Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s acquisition of the aircraft, including a violation of U.S. sanctions, and flew the aircraft to Florida on Monday, according to two U.S. officials.
It’s the latest development in long-frozen relations between the United States and Venezuela, and the seizure in the Dominican Republic marks a further escalation as the United States continues to investigate what it sees as corrupt activities in the Venezuelan government.
“This sends a message all the way up,” one US official told CNN. “It’s unprecedented to seize a foreign head of state’s plane on a criminal matter. We’re sending a clear message here that no one is above the law or exempt from US sanctions.”
Officials have described the plane as Venezuela’s Air Force One, and it has been photographed during Maduro’s previous state visits around the world.
Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader said the plane seized by the United States on Monday was registered in a “personal name” and not that of the Venezuelan government.
Dominican Foreign Minister Roberto Alvarez said the country’s attorney general’s office received an order from a domestic court last May to “immobilize” the plane. The United States had requested that the plane be immobilized in order to search the aircraft for “evidence or objects related to fraud, the smuggling of items for illegal activities and money laundering,” he said.
“The Department of Justice has seized an aircraft that was allegedly illegally purchased for $13 million through a shell company and smuggled out of the United States for use by Nicolas Maduro and his cronies,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
According to the Department of Justice, the plane, a Dassault Falcon 900EX, was purchased from a Florida company and illegally exported from the United States to Venezuela via the Caribbean in April 2023. The plane was used for President Maduro’s international travel and “almost exclusively flew to and from military bases in Venezuela,” according to the Department of Justice.
Records show the plane’s last registered flight was in March, from Caracas to Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic.
In a statement on Monday, the Venezuelan government described the seizure as an “act of piracy” and accused Washington of escalating “aggression” against Maduro’s government following disputed presidential elections in July.
“The US authorities have once again committed a criminal act that can only be described as piracy, illegally seizing an aircraft used by the President of the Republic and justifying the coercive measures they impose illegally and unilaterally around the world,” the statement said.
“The United States is already using its economic and military might to intimidate and pressure countries such as the Dominican Republic into becoming accomplices in criminal activities. This is an example of the so-called ‘rules-based order’ trying to establish the strongest law in the world, ignoring international law,” the report said.
US authorities have been trying for years to cut off the flow of billions of dollars to the Venezuelan regime, and the federal government’s second-largest investigative agency, Homeland Security Investigations, has seized dozens of luxury vehicles and other assets bound for Venezuela.
“The plane was seized in violation of U.S. sanctions against Venezuela and we continue to investigate other criminal cases related to the plane,” Anthony Salisbury said.
A special agent with the Department of Homeland Security Investigations told CNN.
A senior Dominican official told CNN that Maduro’s plane was undergoing maintenance in Dominican territory when it was seized by US authorities, adding that the government had no record of Maduro’s personal plane being in the country before it was seized.
A U.S. official said U.S. authorities were working closely with the Dominican Republic, which had notified Venezuela about the seizure.
The seizure involved multiple federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security Investigations, the Department of Commerce, the Bureau of Industry and Security, and the Department of Justice.
The Dominican Republic’s foreign minister said his government was not participating in the US investigation and that a bilateral agreement between the two countries called for only “international legal cooperation”.
One of the next steps after arriving in the United States will be to pursue confiscation – giving the Venezuelan government an opportunity to petition – and to collect evidence from the aircraft.
The United States recently pressured the Venezuelan government to “immediately” release concrete data about the presidential election, citing concerns about the veracity of Maduro’s victory claim.
Venezuela’s opposition has released more than 80% of the results printed and retrieved from voting machines across the country. Though partial, the documents appear to show that opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia actually won the vote, several experts told CNN.
The situation in Venezuela is influencing US politics as millions have fled the country, many of them choosing to migrate to the US-Mexico border.
Earlier this year, the United States reimposed sanctions on Venezuela’s oil and gas sector in response to the Maduro regime’s refusal to allow “inclusive and competitive elections” to be held.
Following President Maduro’s controversial re-election on July 28, Venezuela suspended commercial air traffic with the Dominican Republic.
Federal agencies, including HSI, have long pursued the Venezuelan government over concerns of corruption, and in recent years have blocked $2 billion worth of illicit proceeds and resources from the government through judgments, seizures and the liquidation of bank accounts, according to one U.S. official.
In March 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted President Maduro and 14 current and former Venezuelan government officials on narco-terrorism, drug trafficking, and corruption charges.
“For more than two decades, President Maduro and several senior officials allegedly conspired with (Colombian leftist guerrilla group) FARC to pump and devastate vast amounts of cocaine into American communities,” then-Attorney General William Barr said at the time.
The State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs has offered a reward of up to $15 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction of President Maduro.
In 2017, two nephews of Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, were sentenced to 18 years in prison by a federal judge in New York City for conspiring to smuggle up to 800 kilograms of cocaine into the United States on a private jet. They were subsequently released in a prisoner swap with the United States in 2022.
“These officials and the Maduro regime are essentially extracting money from the Venezuelan people for their own profit,” the U.S. official said. “The president of Venezuela is flying around in a luxury private jet while people there can’t even buy a loaf of bread.”
Deteriorating economic conditions, food shortages and limited access to health care have forced more than 7.7 million people to flee Venezuela, making it the largest refugee population in the Western Hemisphere.
CNN’s Dennis Royal, Stefano Potzebon, Abel Alvarado and Hannah Rabinowitz contributed reporting.
