Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic – The Trump administration is planning to seize a second plane belonging to the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, currently in the Dominican Republic.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Santo Domingo, the last stop of five Central America's Nation Tours, according to State Department documents obtained by the Associated Press. , is scheduled to announce a seizure on Thursday. .
To implement the seizure, Rubio had to register in a foreign aid freeze exemption request and request it to pay more than $230,000 in storage and maintenance fees. It also required approval from the Department of Justice.
That exemption request filed earlier last week has been approved, and Rubio is expected to announce that the State Department has publicly described it as “law enforcement involvement.”
The plane is the Dassault Falcon 200 used by Maduro and top aides, including his vice president and defense minister, including Greece, Turkey, Russia and Cuba. In the documentation.
The plane's seizing comes a week after President Donald Trump's special mission envoy, Richard Grenell, visited Caracas, met with Maduro and discussed the repatriation of Venezuelan citizens who had illegally entered the United States. Grenell returned with six Americans who were in detention in Venezuela.
The US seized another Maduro plane from the Dominican Republic in September 2024.
At the time, the Department of Justice used Maduro's Associates' Caribbean-based shell company in late 2022 and early 2023 to engage in the purchase of planes from a Florida company ($13 million worth of Dassault Falcon). 900Ex) said it would hide.
In the developments related to Rubio's first stop on Panama's Central America tour, the State Department announced Thursday that Panama's people have agreed to allow US warships to pass through the Panama Canal for free.
These fees were one of the focal points of President Donald Trump's complaints about the canal. He said it will be taken from Panama unless the US strictly limits China's influence in the region.
“U.S. government vessels now pass through the Panama Canal without charging, saving the US government millions of dollars a year,” he said in a post in X.
Rubio reached a contract to cut the fees when he visited Panama on Sunday, but that was not confirmed.
