Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Rajbir Datta, requested the US justice system to execute a seizure order for the Venezuelan Boeing 747-300M with registration YV3531 that landed in Argentina about a year ago with crew members from Venezuela and Iran suspected of espionage and terrorism activities, according to legal documents dated April 13 obtained by the Buenos Aires newspaper La Nación.
«In the seizure request that the prosecutor wants to execute in absentia, it is noted that Venezuela and Emtrasur were notified, and notices were published for 35 days, but no one came forward to claim the aircraft or invoke an immunity clause or violation of Venezuelan sovereignty to keep the device,» the newspaper reports.
Since June of the previous year, the aircraft has been under custody at Ezeiza International Airport in Buenos Aires. In this article, we detail the historical journey of the aircraft up to its seizure.
According to La Nación’s article signed by journalist Hernán Cappiello, the Argentine Ministry of Justice has not responded to the request of US authorities to hand over the aircraft since last year. The United States claims that the plane, registered to Venezuela and acquired from Mahan Air, an Iranian company, violated a US law prohibiting business with companies suspected of terrorism.
Argentina is at a crossroads of whether to comply with the decision of the US justice system or maintain a «friendly» relationship with the governments of Venezuela and Iran.
The Boeing 747-300M was detained at Ezeiza airport on June 8 after Uruguay denied it authorization to enter its airspace. It operated for EMTRASUR, the cargo subsidiary of the state-owned airline Conviasa. At that time, its 19 crew members (4 Iranians and 15 Venezuelans) were detained until the local justice system gradually found no merit in some cases and allowed them to leave Argentina.
La Nación reports that the Argentine Ministry of Justice has been delaying sending the request to federal judge Federico Villena to decide whether to transfer the aircraft to the United States, citing a source involved in the case saying there is a political component in withholding the request, as not handing over the aircraft to the United States means favoring Venezuela.
Background
The United States Department of Justice had requested in August of last year that Argentine authorities seize the Boeing 747-300M with registration YV3531.
This happened after unveiling a presentation made on July 19 before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia alleging that, as a US-manufactured aircraft, it is subject to confiscation due to violations of export control laws related to the unauthorized transfer of the aircraft from Mahan Air (a company they call affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force / IRGC-QF) to Empresa de Transporte Aéreocargo del Sur (EMTRASUR), a subsidiary of the Venezuelan state-owned airline CONVIASA.
«In 2008, the Department of Commerce issued, and has since periodically renewed, a Temporary Denial Order prohibiting Mahan Air, among other things, from conducting any transaction involving any goods exported from the United States that are subject to the Export Administration Regulations,» the Department of Justice had stated at the time.
In October 2021, Mahan Air violated that order by transferring custody and control of the 747-300M to EMTRASUR without authorization from the US government, and subsequently between February and May 2022, when the Venezuelan company re-exported the aircraft between Caracas, Tehran, and Moscow.
«Furthermore, as alleged in the seizure order, in June 2022, Argentine authorities detained the crew of the Boeing aircraft, including five Iranians. The registered captain of the aircraft was identified as a former commander of the IRGC and shareholder and board member of the Iranian airline Qeshm Fars Air,» the Department of Justice continued.
«Argentine security forces also searched the aircraft and found a flight log from Mahan Air documenting the flights of the aircraft after the illegal transfer to EMTRASUR, including a flight to Tehran (Iran) in April 2022. Mahan Air was designated in 2011 by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of the Treasury for providing material support to the IRGC-QF, and Qeshm Fars Air was designated in 2019 for being controlled by Mahan Air and for providing material support to the IRGC-QF,» they added. All this is in addition to CONVIASA being blocked in 2020.
In October, the District of Columbia Court granted the request.
