The Venezuelan embassy in the United States announced on Monday that the aircraft of retired Major General Khalifa Hifter arrived in Venezuela on an unannounced visit.
The Al-Jazeera Net monitoring and verification team followed the registration number of the aircraft that Haftar was carrying on his previous foreign visits, and it was found that it is a private Falcon 900 plane with the registration number "P4-RMA".
By reviewing the civil aviation traffic monitoring sites, it was found that the same plane had moved on Sunday 7 June last from Nouakchott in Mauritania to Caracas Airport in Venezuela, and Haftar has appeared several times in front of this plane in previous visits.
Sonnig International's (Riccardo Mortara) F900 P4-RMA 6/7/20 Nouakchott, Mauritania-Caracas, Venezuela, en route
P4-RMA flew to Caracas first time on 4/24/20
"Riccardo Mortara boosts Haftar's air power from Fujairah" https : //t.co/NnzrCW9wachttps: //t.co/tQkZ5026cZ pic.twitter.com/9jWij9MnJn
- Juha Keskinen (@ MacFinn44) June 7, 2020
According to experts, it is likely that the plane arrived in Caracas to transport gold from Venezuela, where the gold that is banned due to sanctions is transported and melted in Mali, Africa, and then reconfigured and resold.
Data from air navigation sites also showed that the same plane made a previous visit to Caracas on April 24th, and it is manufactured by "Sonnig International Private Jet", a secret company based in Fujairah in the UAE based .
According to press reports, in recent years this company has turned into one of Haftar's arms suppliers in the eastern Libyan region.
Oil and gold
The Wall Street Journal revealed that Washington is investigating suspicious relations between Haftar and Caracas, and irregular oil deals involving Emirati mediators, while the opposition accused President Nicolas Maduro's regime of holding what it described as blood-stained deals.
The newspaper last week published information about US investigations into attempts to establish oil deals between Haftar and Venezuela through a Dubai-based shipping company.
It quoted US, European and Libyan officials as saying that the United Nations and the reconciliation government are participating in the investigations of a shipping company suspected of helping Haftar to market oil in the Mediterranean.
The Wall Street Journal also reported that the United States is also investigating a visit by Haftar to Caracas to broker oil and fuel deals.