07-02-2025
US seizes Venezuelan president's plane held in Dominican Republic during Rubio visit
It also required approval by the US Department of Justice, which said the plane was used by a Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company facing sanctions. An investigation showed the company bought the plane in the US in 2017, sent it to Venezuela and it was serviced multiple times using American parts, the department said.
The plane is a Dassault Falcon 200 that has been used by Maduro and top aides, including his vice president and defense minister, to travel the world, including visits to Greece, Turkey, Russia and Cuba, in what Washington says are violations of US sanctions, according to the State Department.
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The seizure of the plane comes just a week after President Donald Trump's envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell, visited Caracas and met with Maduro to discuss the repatriation of Venezuelan nationals who illegally entered the United States. Grenell returned with six Americans who had been detained in Venezuela.
The US
Secretary of State Marco Rubio (center right) walks with Edwin F. Lopez, the attaché for DHS Homeland Security Investigations, as they walk toward a seized Venezuelan government airplane at La Isabela International Airport.
Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press
At the time, the US Justice Department said Maduro associates in late 2022 and early 2023 used a Caribbean-based shell company to hide their involvement in the purchase of the plane — a Dassault Falcon 900EX valued at $13 million — from a company in Florida.
Related to Rubio's first stop on his trip, he said Thursday that he was 'not confused' about the status of an agreement about eliminating fees for US warships to transit the Panama Canal and understood that Panama has to follow a legal process to take the step.
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'They're a democratically elected government. They have rules. They have laws. They're going to follow their process,' he said.
It comes after the US State Department said late Wednesday on X that the Panamanians had agreed to waive the fees.
Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino later denied that, saying Thursday he had told US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth a day earlier that he could neither set the fees to transit the canal nor exempt anyone from them and that he was surprised by the U.S. State Department's statement suggesting otherwise.
The fees had been one focus of President Donald Trump's complaints about the canal, which he has threatened to retake from Panama unless Panama severely limits Chinese influence in the area.
Given that the US has a treaty obligation to protect the canal, Rubio said, 'I find it absurd that we would have to pay fees to transit a zone that we are obligated to protect in a time of conflict.'
Associated Press writer Alma Solís in Panama City contributed to this report.
