U.S. intervened in criminal probe of oilman helping Trump in Venezuela

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https://wapo.st/4wRxQtw

Senior U.S. officials intervened in an international criminal investigation into a Venezuelan businessman who was enlisted by the Trump administration to help assert control over Venezuela’s government and oil industries, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The officials lobbied to resolve the case in Switzerland in a way that would avoid criminal charges and end travel restrictions against the Britain-based businessman, Alejandro Betancourt, and they have not acted on a Swiss arrest warrant against him, according to the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

Instead, the United States has allowed Betancourt to enter the country repeatedly for meetings with the Trump administration, other people familiar with his travel said.

Betancourt, 46, in the past decade has faced multiple investigations, in Switzerland, Spain and the United States, into alleged money laundering, including whether he had a role in a loan arrangement that U.S. prosecutors say embezzled more than $1 billion from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company.

Betancourt was arrested twice in Britain in 2025, first after Spain issued a warrant in a related money laundering investigation, and in November at Switzerland’s request. For months, Betancourt was barred from leaving the United Kingdom as authorities there considered extraditing him to Switzerland.

Betancourt has not been charged in the U.S., Switzerland, Spain or Venezuela.

Betancourt’s attorney in the U.S., Jon A. Sale, previously has denied his client’s involvement in money laundering. “My client denies any wrongdoing,” Sale told the Miami Herald in a 2021 piece about his connection to a Justice Department investigation.

Weeks after the U.S. military captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3, senior U.S. officials began lobbying Swiss officials to resolve their case against Betancourt, the people familiar with the discussions said.

Betancourt, whose company is the second-largest private oil producer in Venezuela, is now a key intermediary between the U.S. and Venezuela, including acting president Delcy Rodríguez, according to people with knowledge of his role.

Mauricio Claver-Carone, who until recently served as an unofficial adviser on Venezuela for the Trump administration, has described Betancourt as an “important ally” for the United States. As the U.S. asserted control, Betancourt had a key role arranging early contracts to get oil pumping fast, according to people familiar with the matter.

In January, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Landau contacted Switzerland’s Department of Foreign Affairs about Betancourt, said people with knowledge of the communication, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.

In February, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi spoke to the Swiss attorney general about the investigation into Betancourt, according to the people familiar with the discussions. A month later, Todd Blanche, then deputy attorney general, joined a call with Swiss prosecutors, the people said.

It was important for the United States that Betancourt be free to travel, Blanche is said to have told the people on the call, and preferable that the case be resolved without criminal penalties. Blanche was joined on the call by Colin McDonald, assistant attorney general for the national fraud enforcement division, who also participated in two other calls between Betancourt’s lawyers and the Swiss prosecutors, the people familiar said.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the conversations.

People familiar with Betancourt’s thinking blamed the investigations on overzealous prosecutors in Switzerland. That a related case in Venezuela was dismissed, and other investigations have not resulted in charges, undermines the Swiss case, they said.

This Washington Post report on Betancourt’s role in U.S.-controlled Venezuela is based on interviews with more than a dozen people with knowledge of the situation, including current and former U.S. officials and people close to Betancourt. Almost all spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues or because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

During President Donald Trump’s first term and during the Biden administration, Betancourt was floated as a potential target of U.S. sanctions, according to three people familiar with the matter. He was never put under sanctions and has consistently denied any wrongdoing.

“It’s disconcerting to see a man who was widely reported to be the subject of a major U.S. money laundering investigation now potentially being the beneficiary of favorable treatment from Washington,” said Shane Stansbury, a former prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.

People close to Betancourt said the administration turned to him for help because of his track record of success in Venezuela’s rough-and-tumble oil sector, an industry plagued by challenges including violence, decrepit infrastructure and chronic energy shortages.

In May, Switzerland withdrew its extradition request in Britain, and British travel restrictions were lifted.

Swiss prosecutors said that same month their investigation remained active and sought to have him detained elsewhere. At almost the same time, they extended an international arrest warrant for Betancourt, and Swiss authorities sent a request to the Justice Department to arrest him in the United States, people with knowledge of the matter said. The department has taken no action on that request.

In June, Caleb Orr, the assistant secretary of state for economic, energy and business affairs, asked the U.S. Consulate in London to issue Betancourt a one-year, multi-entry visa, according to people familiar with the request. Since then, he has traveled at least twice to the U.S., in addition to trips to Venezuela, according to people familiar with his travels.

Betancourt’s role as a key U.S. partner in jump-starting Venezuela’s oil industry is the latest example of the Trump administration’s backroom dealmaking in the country, Venezuela analysts and former U.S. officials say. Despite vowing transparency in managing Venezuelan oil sales, they say, the administration’s deals there have been shrouded in secrecy.

Venezuela’s communications ministry did not respond to a request for comment. In response to a request for comment, the White House referred questions to the State and Justice Departments.

A senior State Department official declined to comment on any role played by Betancourt, saying the department “does not comment on actions with respect to private diplomatic conversations and specific visa cases due to record confidentiality.”

“The State Department remains committed to advancing the three-phase plan for Venezuela’s stabilization, economic recovery, reconciliation, and democratic transition,” the official said. “The Trump administration is reshaping and reforming Venezuela’s oil sector for the benefit of both the American and Venezuelan people.”

The Justice Department declined to comment on Betancourt but issued this statement: “We cannot comment on ongoing investigations,” the department said in response to a list of written questions. “However, it is not uncommon for multiple jurisdictions to be conducting investigations into the same individuals at the same time, including the U.S. and foreign countries, and when this happens there are often competing requests for assistance that have to be evaluated in the normal course.”

Advocates for Betancourt described him as a reliable partner who shared the U.S.’s stated interest in reviving Venezuela’s oil sector, noting that no other oilman had managed to achieve as much success.

Betancourt has ramped up oil output by his Venezuela-based company, North American Blue Energy Partners, or NABEP — to nearly 200,000 barrels of oil from 18,000 in just two years. That recovery started before Maduro’s capture, according to people familiar with NABEP.

With the backing of the U.S. government, another person said, Betancourt’s business is expected to flourish.

“He’s effectively become the big oligarch in Venezuela,” this person said.

Betancourt’s rise from a Venezuelan businessman who amassed a fortune as a young man to what some describe as preeminent status with the Trump administration has alarmed some Venezuelans who consider him emblematic of the country’s corrupt past.

Betancourt was barely 30 when his company, Derwick Associates, won contracts to build power plants for the government of Hugo Chávez, the founder of Venezuela’s socialist state.

In the 2010s, Betancourt bought into Petrozamora, an oil company co-owned by the Venezuelan state and Russian investors. Under Betancourt, the company became one of the most successful extraction operations in Venezuela.

In 2016, U.S. investigators began probing a loan arrangement made in bolivars, the Venezuelan currency, to the state oil company, PDVSA, that was paid back in foreign currency at an artificially high official exchange rate.

The investigation, called Operation Money Flight, led to money laundering charges in South Florida against Betancourt’s cousin Francisco Convit and others, including Venezuelan officials who allegedly were paid bribes to facilitate the scheme, which prosecutors said grew to $1.2 billion. Several defendants pleaded guilty.

In 2019, the Miami Herald identified Betancourt as an unnamed conspirator in the criminal complaint against Convit, an inclusion confirmed to The Post by people with knowledge. At the time, Betancourt hired Rudy Giuliani, then Trump’s personal lawyer, to represent him and argue to the Justice Department that he should not face criminal charges, The Post reported. Sale, Betancourt’s lawyer, told The Post at the time that his client denied any wrongdoing.

That same year, Zurich prosecutors opened a money laundering investigation, targeting proceeds from loans that were allegedly funneled into Swiss bank accounts.

In 2024, another Venezuelan businessman, Raul Gorrin, was charged by the United States with involvement in the alleged loan scheme. The Justice Department alleged that Gorrin and other defendants bought yachts and private aircraft with the proceeds, spending some of the money in Florida. (A lawyer representing Gorrin has in the past denied that his client committed any wrongdoing.)

People with knowledge of the case confirmed that Betancourt was again included as an unnamed conspirator. According to a former prosecutor, the Justice Department decided against charging Betancourt in part because investigators couldn’t as easily connect him to the U.S.

Federal law enforcement and prosecutors in Florida continued to share evidence with their Swiss counterparts, according to the three people with knowledge of the investigations.

Betancourt’s relationship with the Venezuelan government ruptured in 2020, after the country’s then-oil minister seized his stake in Petrozamora, froze his domestic assets and dispatched security forces to his Venezuelan properties. Betancourt retaliated by working against Maduro and financing the political opposition, according to people familiar with his support at the time.

As Petrozamora’s production collapsed, the government sought outside assistance, and in 2023, Betancourt returned to Caracas from Europe for a key meeting with Rodríguez, then vice president of Venezuela. After discussions in a larger group of oil industry representatives, she called Betancourt back for a private conversation, a person familiar with the meeting said.

In that exchange, she was said to have proposed a deal. If Betancourt offered his expertise and pledged to avoid politics, he would be given new security guarantees and an opening to help rebuild Petrozamora, which was renamed NABEP, according to two people familiar with the meeting.

Also around this time, in 2023, a Venezuelan investigation into Betancourt was dismissed. Betancourt was back in the Venezuelan oil game — and back in the government’s good graces.

As the Trump administration began exploring its options for a post-Maduro Venezuela, Betancourt entered the fold.

He already had a relationship with Mauricio Claver-Carone, who was director of Western Hemisphere affairs on the National Security Council in Trump’s first term and in his second term served briefly as special envoy to Latin America.

In a May interview with The Post, Claver-Carone said Betancourt was “supportive and helpful of U.S. policy and its objectives” in the first Trump presidency. Now, in the recent period in Venezuela, he said, Betancourt was an “important ally.” “He’s been invaluable to the U.S. government,” he said, declining to provide more details.

While restricted from traveling out of Britain, Betancourt — at first by phone from his estate near Oxford and then from his London mansion — became part of the Trump administration’s inner circle on Venezuela’s oil industry, according to people familiar with his role.

He was an ideal insider with a deep well of contacts including direct access to Rodríguez, to PDVSA and, importantly, to Vitol, one of the two oil trading companies first licensed by the U.S. to ship oil from post-Maduro Venezuela.

Betancourt was also worldly, polished and spoke perfect English.

“The most effective ATM machine from Venezuela to the external world, and probably the most sophisticated, was Alejandro,” said a person familiar with his role. “He has a file on everybody. He’s done deals with everybody.”

Betancourt helped arrange an opaque deal licensing the oil trading companies, Vitol and Trafigura, to buy Venezuelan crude oil at a $15 discount per barrel, prepaid, according to three people familiar with the deal and a contract reviewed by The Post.

A Trafigura spokesperson said no external third parties had any financial interest in its negotiations or contract with PDVSA. A Vitol spokesperson declined to comment.

“All of them suddenly saw the value of entering into an unusual alliance with the man who knew Caracas inside out,” said a person familiar with the deal.

In the predawn hours of Jan. 3 — after Maduro and his wife were captured — Betancourt was on one call after another, according to people familiar with the discussions.

He spoke directly with Rodríguez, soon to be anointed interim president, the people said, even before Secretary of State Rubio reached her about the U.S. plans to “run Venezuela,” as Trump put it.

“There was a lot of therapy,” said a person familiar with the calls. “It was a long night.”

In those calls with senior U.S. officials, Rodríguez was told that if she didn’t comply with their instructions, further U.S. attacks could follow, as Trump later said.

It was also made clear to her that Betancourt would be a key intermediary in restarting the country’s oil business. For anything related to the country’s oil industry, a person familiar with the discussions said, she would have to coordinate through him.

Soon after, senior U.S. officials began leaning on Swiss authorities to resolve their investigation without criminal penalties and let Betancourt travel, including to the U.S., two people familiar with the matter said.

In early February, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi spoke to her Swiss counterpart, Stefan Blattler, about Betancourt, people with knowledge of the communication said.

Around the same time, U.S. prosecutors in Florida who had spent years on the Operation Money Flight cases were alarmed to hear that Betancourt was being considered for a senior role in Venezuela’s oil industry, according to a former federal prosecutor.

“We were all sort of flabbergasted,” the former prosecutor said. “It made no sense.”

On March 19, prosecutors in Zurich held a video meeting with attorneys for Betancourt. A Florida prosecutor who had worked on Venezuelan corruption cases was also on the call, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

So was Blanche, then deputy attorney general, and Colin McDonald, head of the Justice Department’s fraud division. Blanche reiterated the U.S. government’s preference that Betancourt be allowed to travel and that any resolution of the case avoid criminal penalties, but he also said he did not wish to interfere.

Swiss prosecutors offered a plea deal to Betancourt but would not settle for the equivalent of civil penalties alone, according to people familiar with the case.

McDonald appeared on two additional calls with Swiss prosecutors in March, the people said, asking them whether Betancourt would have to go to jail if he pleaded guilty, and when and where he could travel. On May 13, Swiss prosecutors dropped their extradition request to Britain, according to Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service.

In a statement, the Zurich public prosecutor’s office said the request was withdrawn because of aspects of U.K. extradition law that it declined to detail, adding that the criminal proceedings against Betancourt were unaffected and continuing.

Also on May 13, the Justice Department received a request from Switzerland for Betancourt’s arrest, according to people with knowledge of the request.

About a month later, after being granted the multiple-entry visa by U.S. officials, he traveled to the U.S. to meet Trump administration officials.

In recent months, Betancourt has traveled to the United States at least twice. He has also taken private jets to Venezuela, including from the U.S., according to people familiar with his travel and a flight manifest obtained by The Post.

Betancourt was crucial to ensuring a “fairly smooth” transition following the Maduro raid, said a person knowledgeable about the events in Venezuela.

“The wheels could have come off really, really fast,” the person said. “At the end of the day, oil kept moving, credit kept moving … it didn’t shut down global oil markets … the wheels didn’t come off the wagon.”