Following President Nicolás Maduro's overthrow, U.S. and Venezuelan authorities have pledged a new era of responsibility for the country's wealthy oil business.
The US will regulate Venezuelan oil sales, according to President Trump. The Trump administration stated that Venezuela will submit monthly budgets to the White House, while the US claimed to have employed auditors to verify receipts.
Delcy Rodríguez, the new head of Venezuela and a supporter of Mr. Trump, said that a new website would allow the public to track every dollar spent on oil.
However, none of these efforts have been able to reveal where Venezuela's oil revenue has been going, raising concerns about the political will in Caracas and Washington.

However, Washington's attempt to demonstrate how and where Venezuela's oil wealth is being spent would be an enormous undertaking, even with the best of intentions. During her former position overseeing the country's economy, Ms. Rodríguez had mostly failed to address Venezuela's opaque and severely corrupt oil business, which was the result of decades of looting.
According to government figures and internal papers, one dollar was stolen for every two dollars that Venezuela made from the sale of oil earlier this decade.
Today, the stakes are considerably higher. Convincing U.S. oil executives that his administration can establish the rule of law is a key component of Mr. Trump's proposal to unlock Venezuela's enormous oil potential with $100 billion in American investment.

During Mr. 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 Mr. Maduro, who survived multiple crises before being captured in January by U.S. Special Forces.According to internal records and interviews with Venezuelan oil officials and industry insiders, the opaque oil trading schemes persisted until Mr. Maduro's downfall, and some recipients continued to covertly conduct business with PDVSA under Ms. Rodríguez.
Her pledge to break with Mr. Maduro's economic policies, which she has held responsible for Venezuela's protracted financial catastrophe, is being tested by the dubious deal-making.
These hitherto unpublished records offer a unique window into the extent of corruption during Mr. Maduro's latter years, which were influenced by growing domestic repression and an economic impasse with the United States.The interviews and records also highlight the pivotal role played by Carlos Malpica Flores, a relative of Mr. Maduro who has been referred to as the guardian of the Maduro family's fortune by a number of Venezuelan oil executives and industry insiders. In order to prevent retaliation, the interviewees for this piece agreed to remain anonymous.
Declaring that Mr. Malpica had "facilitated the continued corruption of the Maduro regime," the Trump administration placed sanctions on him. Questions sent through two relatives and a business partner were not answered by Mr. Malpica.According to PDVSA records, shell corporations under the control of Mr. Malpica and other business associates of Mr. Maduro exported $11 billion worth of oil in 2021 and 2022 without making any payments to the state enterprise. According to data from the nation's central bank, that sum accounted for half of Venezuela's total oil earnings over those two years.
Venezuelan legislation at the time, which granted PDVSA exclusive custody of the nation's oil resources, seems to have been broken by the off-the-books oil transactions.
According to those close to the business, Mr. Malpica seems to have lost access to crude sales since Mr. Maduro was overthrown and the United States imposed control over Venezuela's oil exports in January.However, the individuals and a senior Venezuelan oil official claim that Mr. Malpica is still making money from his businesses that manage oil fields, supply PDVSA with services, and transport oil products locally.
Requests for comment from the Venezuelan administration were not answered. For this piece, the Trump administration declined to make a public statement.
According to an administration official, Venezuela's leadership was making assurances that money was being used appropriately.
Michael Kozak, a senior State Department official, said Congress last month that KPMG, a multinational financial services company, was recruited by the U.S. government to audit Venezuela's oil sales. Kozak added that the business will give reports at a later, undisclosed date. Without giving further information, Venezuela's central bank announced last week that it had independently hired a different auditing firm.

The 53-year-old Mr. Malpica's story perfectly captures how the Maduro family turned the Venezuelan economy into a personal fief, a system that is still partially in place despite a change in leadership.
When his cancer-stricken mentor and predecessor, Hugo Chávez, left him the presidency in 2013, Mr. Maduro—a former union leader and bus driver—lacked the technical knowledge of Venezuela's complex economy.
To govern the nation, Mr. Maduro needed partners. And those individuals had to be devoted to him rather than Mr. Chávez, a self-described revolutionary who was adored by his supporters. Mr. Maduro set out to establish a new elite with his wife, Cilia Flores, a prominent politician in her own right.Ms. Rodríguez, a lawyer from a well-known communist family, was one of Mr. Maduro's recruiters.
Additionally, scores of relatives without any apparent qualifications were appointed to public positions by Mr. Maduro and Ms. Flores, some of whom are still in office today.
According to top officials at the time, one relative was Mr. Malpica, the first lady's nephew, who persuaded the president to allow Mr. Maduro to oversee transactions with the oil industry at the beginning of his term.
Mr. Malpica's career took off right away. Mr. Maduro appointed him to the board of Bandes, Venezuela's development bank, just months after he came to office. He soon rose to the position of head of finance at PDVSA and national treasurer.After quitting the state sector in 2016 to work as a PDVSA subcontractor and oil buyer, Mr. Malpica continued to take advantage of the positions' unrestricted access to Venezuela's oil wealth.
According to the meeting's presentation obtained by The Times, PDVSA's board convened in late 2022 to assess the years' worth of unpaid oil bills that Mr. Malpica and other Maduro allies had left behind. The board determined that between 2019 and 2022, about 240 oil tankers departed without payment, costing the Venezuelan government $13 billion.

According to the presentation, the board decided to essentially write that money off.
After masterminding the assassination of her predecessor, Mr. Maduro's protégé Tareck El Aissami, who is on trial for embezzlement, Ms. Rodríguez became leadership of PDVSA few months later. The most obvious violations at PDVSA, such unpaid oil sales, mostly halted under her leadership.
However, Mr. Malpica and other businesses who were loyal to Mr. Maduro continued to be granted special access to oil, demonstrating the limitations of her efforts.For instance, according to the documents, a shell business associated with Mr. Malpica rose to become the second-largest exporter of Venezuelan crude in 2023, trailing only Chevron, a multinational corporation that has been producing oil in Venezuela for a century.
Despite having no prior business experience, copies of some of the contracts reveal that the shell firm, China-registered Hangzhou Energy, obtained oil from PDVSA on extremely favourable and unusual conditions. According to a 2022 deal, Hangzhou was permitted to sell roughly 10% of the nation's exports in exchange for giving the government an undisclosed sum of "humanitarian aid."

For example, the documents show that a shell company connected to Mr. Malpica became the second-largest exporter of Venezuelan crude in 2023, only surpassed by the international company Chevron, which has been producing oil in Venezuela for a century.
Copies of several of the contracts show that the shell company, China-registered Hangzhou Energy, acquired oil from PDVSA on very beneficial and unique terms despite having no prior commercial experience. A 2022 agreement allowed Hangzhou to sell about 10% of the country's exports in return for providing the government with an undisclosed amount of "humanitarian aid."

Zhang Junling, the operations manager in Hangzhou, did not respond to an email.
Several PDVSA officials and individuals in the Venezuelan oil industry claim that although Hangzhou's legal representatives were supposedly in China, in reality, Mr. Malpica and a partner, Ramos Carretero, represented Hangzhou in meetings with PDVSA, suggesting the two men were the company's ultimate beneficiaries.
Other peculiar and profitable payment methods were also available in Hangzhou.The majority of oil purchasers were required to pay PDVSA in US currency. However, according to PDVSA records, internal communications obtained by The New York Times, and interviews with Venezuelan oil officials, Hangzhou paid Bandes, the development bank, in bol¢ars, the local currency.
The plan went against the fundamental purpose of oil exports, which is to provide hard currency for imports.
Because of Venezuela's regulated exchange rate, Hangzhou's owners could make enormous profits by purchasing oil for cheap bol¢ars and selling it to Chinese refiners for stable currencies like dollars.

Additionally, because of Venezuela's uncontrollably high inflation rate, any bol¢ars that Hangzhou ultimately deposited in Bandes, an opaque organization connected to Mr. Malpica, were essentially worthless.
Because of his close ties to Mr. Maduro and his spouse, Mr. Malpica was able to withstand PDVSA's recurring purges, which have imprisoned scores of executives and four of its recent presidents, including the majority of those who had contracts with Hangzhou.
According to a number of people who know both of them well, Mr. Malpica also succeeded in developing a friendship with Ms. Rodríguez over the years. Numerous Maduro relatives have been sacked or shunned as a result of the new president's housecleaning, but this relationship seems to have spared him so far.Since his arrest, a number of Mr. Maduro's close oil business associates have been detained; however, none of them have been publicly accused of any financial crimes.
There is only one entry on the Transparent Sovereignty accountability website that Ms. Rodríguez promised in January.
According to the website, the government raised the minimum wage in March by selling $300 million worth of fuel oil.
Who purchased the oil and how much it cost were not stated on the website.