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Venezuela has accused the United States of “shameless robbery” after taking one of its government aircraft in the Dominican Republic.
The Secretary of State of the United States, Marco Rubio, supervised the seizure of the plane on Thursday, the second Venezuelan plane that the United States has confiscated in the Caribbean country in less than a year.
The US authorities said there were legal reasons for seizure, “based on violations of US sanctions, export controls and money laundering.” The Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs called Rubio “a aircraft thief.”
The United States has long imposed a variety of sanctions on Venezuela in response to what it describes as crime, corruption and repression under the leader of the South America Nation, Nicolás Maduro.
More recently, He placed financial sanctions to a series of Venezuelan officials In response to the result of a presidential election last year, which saw Maduro re -elected. The United States, among others, has played the official results, which the opposition says they were manipulated in favor of Maduro.
Rubio, a key figure in the new Trump administration, supervised the confiscation of the Jet Dassault Falcon 200 on a visit to a military landing track in the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo, at the last stop of his Latin American tour.
He told reporters on Thursday: “The message is that when there are sanctions because they are violating human rights, they are violating a complete series of things, traveling to Iran, helping countries that really want damage to the United States.
“These sanctions will be applied and reinforced.”
The authorities of the Dominican Republic arrested the plane last year after the United States said it had violated the unilateral sanctions of the United States against Venezuela.
Venezuelan officials had used the plane to fly to Greece, Turkey, Russia, Nicaragua and Cuba, and had taken it to the Dominican Republic for maintenance, according to the United States Department of State.
The Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that “it would take all necessary measures to denounce this robbery and demand the immediate return of its plane.”
In September, the United States under the then President Joe Biden confiscated the first Venezuelan government plane in the Dominican Republic that had been used to transport President Maduro on international trips.
