He Venezuelan Anti-Blockade Observatory (OVA) registered Unilateral Coercive Measure (MCU) number 931 imposed against Venezuela, adding the illegal seizure, by the United States (US), of the plane that was providing transportation services to the Republic that was located in the Dominican Republic.
The action against the “Dassault Falcon 900EX aircraft number T7-ESPRT, which was in the territory of the Dominican Republic,” was registered as MCU number 931 imposed on the nation since December 2014, according to a detailed report from the OVA published this Friday.
He also indicated that the measure was adopted “in an opaque context, of judicialization and politicization of the case,” because the US Biden-Harris administration “has not yet identified the sanctioned US individuals or legal entities, both in the United States and abroad. OFAC has not yet published the names on its list of specially designated entities, nor does the aircraft data appear on said list, identifying it as a sanctioned asset.”
Judicialization of the case
The Anti-Blockade Observatory noted that, instead of using the sanctioning procedures derived from the executive orders themselves, “this time the US Government took the case to court, involving officials from the Department of Justice, who ordered the seizure and the sending of the aircraft to its territory.”
“International agencies and other media presented the case to the public as the seizure of ‘Nicolás Maduro’s plane’ in an obvious disinformation operation to divert focus from the main fact: the expropriation of a private aircraft and the threat to the aeronautical sector in the region,” the report detailed.
Political message
The OVA, the entity that keeps a record of each MCU imposed against the Bolivarian nation since 2014, stated that the seizure of the plane seeks to “intimidate the aeronautical sector so that it avoids maintaining commercial relations with Venezuela, even if these do not directly involve the President or officials of his Government.”
This effect is what the UN rapporteur on MCU, Alena Douhan, has described as over-compliance or “excessive compliance with a sanction.” By affecting private operations and assets, the aim is to generate fear of “exposure to risk” in order to indirectly block normal commercial operations with Venezuela.
