However, ditching a plane, especially a plane designed to fly and land well at slow speed like Cessna's Caravans, is not the guaranteed death that might be implied by "plane crash".
Even ditching in high speed passenger jets can be survivable, just ask Capt. Sullenberger about his ditching into the icy Hudson where all 150 passengers and 5 crew survived.
So, this could easily be the "perfect" scenario for a hit to clean up loose ends with no collateral damage, where all survive but the target and few bother to look more closely.
The Caravan might have revealed clues as to why its Pratt & Whitney turboprop engine, one of the world's most reliable, would have developed problems, but it was somehow destroyed after it was ditched into the ocean.
Curious...
If you’re going to set out to kill someone.... doing it this way would be WAY too complicated. I really can’t see a scenario where someone would go to so much trouble for some obscure gov’t official.