Venezuela’s Ambassador to Panama Jorge Luis Durán Centeno told Efe on Monday that Lieutenant Eduardo Figueroa, who is allegedly involved in a plot to topple Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro that was thwarted last week, is in Panama after fleeing Venezuela.

“The issue is being handled at high government level,” Durán said when asked about a video on Youtube in which the diplomatic refers to the case, and a statement posted on the website of the embassy.

The ambassador added the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry sent a “very urgent” notice on Sunday to “the Government of Panama, the international organizations accredited in the Central American country, the diplomatic corps and the Latin American community” about the alleged coup plan reported last Thursday by President Maduro.

“The Venezuelan diplomatic mission in Panama reported on the evening of Sunday, February 15, through a very urgent notice sent to the Government of the Republic of Panama” (as instructed by Caracas), on the coup plan that was supposed to be deployed on February 12, 2015, he said.

The letter reported that “the Bolivarian government managed to defuse a new military action involving a group of (Venezuelan) aviation officers who had the support of the US government.”

According to the notice, ten officers were arrested, while “three other suspects managed to leave the Venezuelan territory.”

Durán Centeno reported in the video and the statement posted on the website of the embassy that one of these officers, “Lt. Eduardo Figueroa, is in Panama, and fortunately (Venezuelan) intelligence agencies are already conducting the relevant operations with the support, of course, of the Republic of Panama.”

The ambassador said he expects that these events “do not affect at all the good development of the Seventh Summit of the Americas,” to be held in April in Panama.

No Panamanian government spokesman was available to confirm the reports, Efe added.