USA seizes Venezuelan government plane in Santo Domingo; Marco Rubio Supervisa Operation in Person

The United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, supervised on Thursday the seizure of a Venezuelan government plane, used by President Nicolás Maduro and his advisors, and was held in the Dominican Republic.

It is the second Venezuelan plane that the United States is seized in recent months and occurs during Rubio’s visit to Santo Domingo, at the last stop of his five -day tour of Latin America.

Endless seizure required Rubio to sign a request to freely freeze foreign aid to pay more than 230,000 dollars in storage and maintenance installments. It also required the approval of the Department of Justice, which has only said that it is a «police commitment.»

In the next 45 days the ship will be transferred to Miami, according to officials.

The plane is a Dassault Falcon 200 that has been used by Maduro and officials such as its vice president and defense minister to travel to various countries, including Greece, Turkey, Russia and Cuba, in what the Trump government says they are violations of the Washington sanctions.

The seizure of the plane occurs just a week after Trump’s envoy for special missions, Richard Grenelll, visited Caracas and met with Maduro to talk about the repatriation of Venezuelan nationals who entered the United States illegally. Grenelll returned with six Americans who were detained in Venezuela.

The United States seized another of Maduro’s planes of the Dominican Republic in September 2024.

On that occasion, the Department of Justice indicated that Maduro Associates at the end of 2022 and in 2023 used a facade company located in the Caribbean to hide their participation in the purchase of the plane – a Dassault Falcon 900Ex, valued at 13 million dollars— of a company in Florida.