The U.S. government apprehended a Boeing 747 cargo plane in Miami on Monday after it was sold by a sanctioned Iranian airline, Mahan Airline, to a state-owned Venezuelan cargo airline for violating American export control laws, according to a statement from the Justice Department.
The plane, which had been flown from Argentina early that morning, was to be “prepared for disposition” in Florida after the sale violated the United States’s trade laws by “illegally using America-made products” to benefit foreign ventures.
“The transfer of this plane to U.S. custody is the final step in the long process to bring this case to its rightful conclusion,” said Larissa Knapp, executive assistant director of the FBI’s National Security Branch, in a statement. “The FBI, along with our federal government and international partners, used every tool under our authorities to hold the Iranian government and their affiliates accountable for violating U.S. laws.”
The Iranian airline company is associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, which the U.S. government has identified as a foreign terrorist organization, according to the statement.
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Venezuela’s government said the plane transfer was a “shameful rapacious operation” and that it would “take all actions to restore justice and achieve the restitution of the aircraft to its legitimate owner,” with President Nicolas Maduro’s administration claiming the U.S. and Argentina colluded, the Associated Press reported.
“The Justice Department is committed to ensuring that the full force of U.S. laws deny hostile state actors the means to engage in malign activities that threaten our national security,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, head of the department’s national security division, in a statement.
