By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. pilot pleaded guilty on Tuesday to violating American sanctions by transporting former Venezuelan oil minister Tareck El Aissami, whom Washington accuses of drug trafficking.
Michols Orsini admitted to one count of conspiracy to violate sanctions at a hearing before U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan.
Orsini said agents with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security visited his home in 2018, after he had flown El Aissami between Venezuela and the Dominican Republic.
He said that at the agents' request, he called his boss at a Florida-based firm that chartered flights for El Aissami between 2017 and 2019 to discuss flying the oil minister.
Orsini said the agents recorded the call and told him he could continue to fly El Aissami as long as he informed them, but that he did not tell them about several subsequent flights.
"I was scared," he said.
Victor Mones, who founded the Florida private jet firm, pleaded guilty in 2019 to violating sanctions. He was sentenced in 2021 to 4-1/2 years in prison.
The United States sanctioned El Aissami in 2017, accusing him of helping arrange drug shipments out of Venezuela, including to the United States and Mexico, through his control of a Venezuelan airbase and shipping ports.
The United States charged El Aissami, Orsini, Mones and others with criminal sanctions violations over the flights in 2019, as Washington ramped up pressure on Venezuela's socialist President Nicolas Maduro to resign.
The United States accuses Maduro of corruption, human rights violations and rigging elections, which he denies.
El Aissami has denied wrongdoing. He resigned as oil minister in March as Maduro's government conducted a separate probe into corruption at state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela.