Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro called his Argentine counterpart Javier Milei a “bandit” on Thursday, three days after the United States announced it had completed the seizure of a Venezuelan plane held in Buenos Aires for a year and a half.
“They stole our plane (…). “The bandit Milei stole the plane from Venezuela, Javier Milei, the hero of the ultra-right,” Maduro said in a televised statement.
“He pretends to be crazy, he is crazy or both,” he added, referring to the Argentine leader elected last November.
The Boeing 747 cargo plane belonging to the Venezuelan company Emtrasur was grounded in Argentina in June 2022 after arriving from Mexico with a load of auto parts.
The aircraft was sold in October 2021 by the Iranian Mahan Air to Emtrasur, a subsidiary of the Venezuelan public airline Conviasa, which constituted a violation of American sanctions, the American Department of Justice justified the forwarding to the Argentine authorities at the request of the seizure in early August 2022 a court in the District of Columbia.
Caracas and Tehran protested U.S. attempts to seize the plane, but an Argentine judge ordered its handover to the United States in February.
The 19 crew members were held in Argentina – although free – and were then gradually allowed to leave the country as the investigation progressed.
Among them were four Iranians, including one whom Washington suspected of being a former senior leader of the Revolutionary Guard and its Quds Force, which the United States has designated a terrorist organization.
“The seized U.S.-built aircraft was transferred from a sanctioned Iranian airline in a transaction that violated U.S. export control laws and directly benefited the Islamic State of the Revolutionary Guard, a terrorist organization,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen was quoted as saying Monday in a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice.
“Mahan Air — known for transporting weapons and fighter jets for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah — violated our export restrictions … “(The plane) now belongs to the American government,” said Matthew S. Axelrod, Under Secretary of State for Export Control.
Venezuela's Foreign Ministry said it would “take all necessary measures” to return the plane to its “rightful owner.”