Trump's Venezuela Oil Deal Runs Through a Businessman Under Investigation for Money Laundering

Since the Washington Post's Aug. 27 report that U.S. officials lobbied Swiss prosecutors to ease off Alejandro Betancourt, the same businessman has surfaced as the operational partner behind the U.S.-Venezuela oil deal President Trump announced the following evening, Aug. 28.

The deal, negotiated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth with Venezuela's interim president Delcy Rodríguez, gives the U.S. government 55% effective output of a new joint venture covering 17 oil fields and more than 65 billion barrels of proven reserves, according to a U.S. official who spoke to the Epoch Times. Trump called it the biggest oil deal in world history.

According to four people familiar with the arrangement cited by the San Juan Daily Star, the U.S. government's private partner in that venture is North American Blue Energy Partners, known as NABEP, the company controlled by Betancourt's family. NABEP is Venezuela's second-largest private oil producer, pumping about 200,000 barrels a day from Lake Maracaibo and the Orinoco Belt, according to Bloomberg reporting carried by both Fortune and Africa Business Insider.

Who Betancourt Is

Betancourt made his early fortune in Venezuela during the chavista era and is under investigation in Spain and Switzerland for money laundering and tax fraud, according to El País. He has not been charged with a crime in either country and denies wrongdoing, Fortune reported. Until earlier this year he was barred from leaving the United Kingdom and split time between homes in Chelsea and Oxfordshire; he returned to Caracas on June 27, three days after earthquakes killed more than 6,000 people in Venezuela, El País reported.

Fortune reported that Betancourt avoided setting foot on U.S. soil until recently because of an American investigation into his conduct. Bloomberg's reporting, cited by both Fortune and Africa Business Insider, describes him now as the Trump administration's fixer in Venezuela, identifying oil assets, vetting operational risks, and connecting American wildcatters like Lionheart Capital and Pacific Coast Energy Co. to Venezuelan fields, since major players like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips have stayed on the sidelines.

In a transaction that raises its own questions, a party close to Betancourt agreed to buy out Florida oil magnate Harry Sargeant III's minority stake in NABEP, according to people familiar with the deal cited by Fortune. Shortly after that sale closed, the Treasury Department notified Sargeant's attorney that it had blocked the assets of his offshore holding company. No public explanation for the timing of that Treasury action has been given, and no charges against Sargeant have been announced.

The Money and the Math

Rubio described the deal as bringing nearly $100 billion in private investment to Venezuela. Rodríguez, in a Saturday television address covered by the Guardian, claimed it would generate more than $209 billion in tax revenue and called the benefits "endless." Those two figures describe different things, investment versus revenue, but neither administration has published the underlying contract terms that would let outside analysts reconcile them.

Trump said on Truth Social Sunday that Venezuelan oil purchased through the deal will replenish the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which fell to roughly 290 million barrels in late August, a 44-year low, according to the Epoch Times. He blamed the Biden administration for depleting it and said the arrangement comes "at no cost to the American taxpayer."

Left unaddressed by that framing: the San Juan Daily Star reported that any meaningful new Venezuelan production will take years to materialize, meaning the deal will do little to move gas prices or refill the SPR in the near term. Venezuela currently produces just over 1 million barrels a day, about 1% of global output, roughly the same share it produced under Maduro.

The Opposition's Case

The deal has provoked backlash inside Venezuela from both opposition figures and members of Rodríguez's own Chavismo movement, the Guardian reported. Critics argue that awarding control of the country's most valuable resource to a single well-connected operator, without any competitive bidding process, hands outsized leverage to one businessman with an open legal cloud over his head, at the expense of Venezuelan sovereignty and transparency. Rodríguez insists Venezuela retains ownership and sovereignty over the reserves themselves, telling viewers the country needs "investment, technology, infrastructure and production capacity" to turn underground reserves into actual development.

A $100 billion, no-bid arrangement funneled through a businessman under active foreign investigation is the kind of structure that normally draws congressional scrutiny. But no U.S. investigation, indictment, or formal finding of wrongdoing exists against Betancourt in this matter, and the underlying Spanish and Swiss probes predate the oil deal by years without producing charges.

The Epoch Times' coverage centers almost entirely on the SPR and taxpayer-cost angles Trump emphasized, without mentioning Betancourt by name or the legal questions surrounding him. The identity of the operational partner running 17 oil fields for the next century is not a footnote to this deal.

The unresolved question is whether Congress or federal regulators will ever see the actual joint-venture contract terms, and whether Treasury's move against Sargeant signals a broader look at who benefits from Venezuela's reopening, or was simply a coincidence of timing.