Six months after American special forces carried Nicolás Maduro out of Caracas, Washington controls the proceeds of Venezuela's oil industry, and almost nobody outside the administration can say where the money has gone.
The Financial Times exclusively reported this week that roughly £9.7 billion ($13 billion) in Venezuelan oil revenue has flowed through arrangements supervised by the Trump administration, while only about £224 million ($300 million) has been publicly traced arriving in Caracas.
The gap has hardened a congressional push for an independent audit, revived questions about the legal basis for the whole arrangement, and drawn accusations that the United States is sitting on a devastated country's money while it digs out from an earthquake.
An Offshore Account in Doha and a Novel Mechanism
The paper trail begins with a single cargo. The first sale of Venezuelan crude after Maduro's capture went to the trading houses Vitol and Trafigura for an estimated £373 million ($500 million), and the proceeds were routed not through the US Treasury but through an account in Qatar under American supervision.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained the arrangement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, testifying that £224 million ($300 million) had been disbursed to Venezuela while £149 million ($200 million) was 'still sitting' in the account.
He described the structure as 'novel' and 'a short-term mechanism,' justified by the fact that Washington does not recognise the government in Caracas and that money held in a US bank could be seized by Venezuela's creditors.
Under questioning, Rubio conceded that no audit process had been finalised, and said the first disbursement would be reviewed retroactively. That admission, more than any single figure, is what set the oversight fight in motion.
An Executive Order That Placed the Money Beyond the Courts
The legal architecture arrived on 9 January, when President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14373, declaring a national emergency and creating a protected regime for Venezuelan oil revenue held in designated Treasury accounts.
The order determines that the funds are the sovereign property of Venezuela held by the United States in a custodial capacity, insulating them from attachment by the creditors owed roughly £127 billion ($170 billion) after years of defaults and expropriations.
Sanctions lawyers noted at the time that the order centralises control over any dealing in those funds within the executive branch, prioritising foreign policy aims over commercial judgment creditors. Senator Elizabeth Warren has argued there is 'no basis in law' for the president to sell assets seized by the American military.
The mechanism has also proved inconsistent in practice. Despite the order pointing to Treasury accounts, the first £373 million ($500 million) went through Doha, and it was only in February that Energy Secretary Chris Wright told NBC News the money would no longer go to Qatar, by which point revenue had passed £746 million ($1 billion) with a further £3.7 billion ($5 billion) of crude under short-term sale agreements.
Congress Demands an Audit It Has Not Received
Senate Democrats responded with legislation. Chuck Schumer and Adam Schiff introduced the Venezuela Oil Proceeds Transparency Act, directing the Government Accountability Office to audit the offshore arrangement, report to Congress within 90 days of completion, and force the activities of the State, Energy and Treasury departments into the open.
The accounting gap widened rather than closed. A State Department witness told Congress in April that the department had authorised the disbursement of about £2.2 billion ($3 billion) to Venezuela, but could not say how much money remained in the Treasury accounts.
Roxanna Vigil, a former senior sanctions policy adviser at the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, set out the scale of the opacity in an analysis for the Council on Foreign Relations.
Almost 100 million barrels worth an estimated £6 billion ($8 billion) had by then moved through a process she described as marked by no transparency and minimal oversight, and the administration had not disclosed how much oil it had sold, how much revenue it had collected, or how the funds had been used.
Earthquakes, Aid and the Politics of a Missing Ledger
The question of custody turned acute in June, when twin earthquakes killed at least 3,300 people in Venezuela and left tens of thousands injured or homeless. The United Nations Development Programme put the damage at roughly £5 billion ($6.7 billion).
Washington's humanitarian response was £224 million ($300 million), a figure critics noted matched almost exactly the only sum publicly traced back to Caracas from the country's own oil. Caracas has made its own transparency promises with similarly thin results: interim president Delcy Rodríguez said the public could follow every oil dollar on a new website, which recorded a £224 million ($300 million) fuel oil sale in March used to raise the minimum wage, without naming the buyer or the price.
Neither government disputes that the oil is flowing. Venezuelan exports reached a seven-year high this spring, and Trump has told oil executives that rebuilding the sector will require £75 billion ($100 billion) of American investment, while suggesting the United States should be repaid for the cost of removing Maduro.
A country counting its dead is owed an accounting of its own wealth, and six months on the ledger still runs to a single line.
