US urges Argentina to seize grounded Venezuelan plane

The United States on Tuesday asked Argentina to seize a Venezuelan plane that has been based in Buenos Aires since June after an Iranian airline allegedly flouted Washington sanctions by selling it to Caracas.

The Boeing 747 cargo plane, owned by Venezuelan company Emtrasur, has been stuck at a Buenos Aires airport with its 19 crew members since it arrived with a load of car parts from Mexico on June 8 after unsuccessfully attempting to enter Uruguay.

The crew consists of five Iranians and 14 Venezuelans. On July 19, a US court in the District of Columbia ordered the plane to be impounded on the grounds that it violated US “export control laws.”

The court alleged an “unlawful transfer” from Mahan Air — an airline affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force (IRGC-QF), which Washington has considered and sanctioned as a terrorist organization — to Emtrasur, a subsidiary of Venezuelan company Conviasa , which is also under sanctions by the US Treasury Department.

“The Justice Department will not tolerate transactions that violate our sanctions and export laws,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said in a statement.

“We will aggressively seek to prevent sanctioned companies from gaining access to or benefiting from the illegal transfer of American-made items,” added another US attorney, Matthew Graves.

In 2008, the US Department of Commerce issued an order barring Mahan Air from doing business with products exported from the United States.

“As alleged in the seizure order, on or about October 2021, Mahan Air violated the Preliminary Denial Order and U.S. export control laws when it transferred custody and control of the Boeing aircraft to EMTRASUR without U.S. government approval,” the Justice Department said into a statement.

The statement came a day after a judge in Argentina said 12 of the crew members of the grounded plane could leave the country, although four Iranians – including one suspected of being an IRGC member – and three Venezuelans from the whereabouts have been ordered.