US and Venezuelan officials have promised a new era of accountability for Venezuela’s lucrative oil industry after the downfall of President Nicolas Maduro.
US President Donald Trump said his country would control Venezuelan oil sales. Venezuela would submit monthly budgets to the White House, the Trump administration said, and the United States said it hired auditors to check receipts.
Venezuela’s new leader and Trump’s ally, Delcy Rodriguez, said the public could trace every oil dollar on a new website.
None of these initiatives, however, have thus far shed light on where Venezuela’s oil money has been going, prompting questions about the political will in Washington and Caracas.
Yet even with the best intentions, Washington’s plan to show how and where Venezuela’s oil riches are being spent would be a gargantuan task.
Decades of plundering have left Venezuela with an opaque and deeply corrupt oil industry, which Rodriguez had largely failed to solve during her previous role running the national economy.
For every US$2 that Venezuela earned selling oil earlier this decade, US$1 was stolen, internal documents and official statistics show.
The stakes are even higher today. For Trump, his plan to unlock Venezuela’s massive oil potential with US$100bil in American investment hinges in part on convincing US oil executives that his administration can establish the rule of law.
For Rodriguez, assuring Venezuelans that the oil industry, a core part of the country’s national identity, benefits many and not just the few is vital to improving her long odds of winning a competitive presidential election that the United States is pushing for next year.
It’s unclear how much corruption Rodriguez would tolerate in order to keep her grip on the government, which remains filled with Maduro’s apparatchiks and their business-owner patrons.
During Maduro’s 13-year rule, Venezuela’s omnipresent state oil company, known as PDVSA, had become his family’s personal estate, allowing relatives and cronies to sell oil at highly preferential terms.
The patronage greased the wheels of the ruling apparatus, ensuring its loyalty to Maduro, who survived multiple crises before being captured in January by US Special Forces.
The opaque oil trading schemes continued right up to Maduro’s fall, and some beneficiaries have kept quietly doing business with PDVSA under Rodriguez, according to internal documents and interviews with Venezuelan oil officials and people close to the industry.
The questionable deal-making is testing her promise to make a clean break with Maduro’s economic policies, which she has blamed for Venezuela’s prolonged financial crisis.
These previously unreported documents provide a rare glimpse of the scale of graft during Maduro’s final years, shaped by an economic standoff with the United States and mounting repression at home.
The documents and interviews also show the central role played by a relative of Maduro, Carlos Malpica Flores, whom several Venezuelan oil officials and industry insiders have described as the guardian of the Maduro family’s wealth. The people interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals.
The Trump administration imposed sanctions on Malpica, 53, in December, claiming he had “facilitated the continued corruption of the Maduro regime”. Malpica did not respond to questions sent through a business partner and two relatives.
PDVSA documents show that shell companies controlled by Malpica and other businesspeople close to Maduro exported oil worth US$11bil in 2021 and 2022 without paying anything to the state company.
That amount represented half of all of Venezuela’s oil revenues in those two years, statistics from the country’s central bank show.
The off-the-books oil sales appear to have violated Venezuelan law at the time, which gave PDVSA sole custody of the country’s oil wealth.
Since Maduro’s removal and the imposition of US control of Venezuela’s oil exports in January, Malpica appears to have lost access to crude sales, according to people close to the industry.
But the people, as well as a senior Venezuelan oil official, say Malpica continues profiting from his companies that run oil fields, provide services to PDVSA and ship oil products locally.
Venezuela’s government did not respond to requests for comment. The Trump administration declined to comment publicly for this article.
A US administration official said Venezuela’s government was providing commitments that funds were being properly spent.
A senior State Department official, Michael Kozak, told Congress that the US government hired KPMG, a global financial services firm, to audit Venezuela’s oil sales, adding that the firm will provide reports at a later, unspecified date.
Venezuela’s central bank said it separately hired another auditing firm, without providing additional details.
The story of Malpica epitomises the transformation of the Venezuelan economy into a personal fief of the Maduro family, a system still partly in place despite a leadership change.
Malpica’s close relationship with Maduro and his wife helped him survive PDVSA’s periodic purges, which have landed four of its recent presidents and dozens of executives in jail.
He also managed to strike up a friendship over the years with Rodríguez, according to several people who know both of them well.
This connection appears to have spared him thus far from the new president’s housecleaning, which has led to dozens of Maduro relatives being fired or ostracised.
Several oil businesspeople close to Maduro have been detained since his capture, but so far none has been publicly charged with any financial crimes.
The oil industry accountability website, called Transparent Sovereignty, promised by Rodriguez in January, displays a single entry today.
The website says the government sold US$300mil worth of fuel oil in March, which was used to increase the minimum wage. The website did not say who bought the oil or for how much. — ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
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