US publishes account of $12.26 billion from Venezuela's oil and minerals

The United States Department of State has released a report detailing what it says the US has done with more than $12 billion in revenue from Venezuelan oil and mineral resources, nearly a year after it captured the country's leader, Nicolas Maduro.

The disclosure, in a 53-page report released on Thursday, is part of an effort to 'promote transparency and accountability in the management of these funds', the report says. It seeks to address concerns about the Trump administration's handling of revenue held in trust for Venezuela.

In January, US forces conducted a raid on the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, capturing Maduro and his wife and bringing them to New York City, where they are facing charges related to drug trafficking and torture.

Venezuela's then-vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, took over after Maduro's capture and has since made agreements with Washington that saw the US take a direct stake in profits earned from the export of oil and other mineral resources from the South American country.

Since removing Maduro from power, the Trump administration has sought to directly control who buys natural resources from Venezuela and who earns profits from those sales.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order in January establishing special bank accounts that would hold revenue from those transactions, to be eventually distributed back to Venezuela in a controlled manner.

The report covers flows into and out of US-controlled accounts between 3 January 2026 and 30 September 2026. The State Department has also contracted the private Washington, DC-based auditing firm KPMG to examine the transactions.

According to the report, the US took in more than $12.26 billion from 'verified and approved entities engaging in authorized activities' in Venezuela during that time. Most of that flow came from crude oil and petroleum-based revenue, but it also included deposits stemming from transactions involving gold, minerals and fertilisers.

More than $12 billion of that revenue had been disbursed as of 30 September, with some $169 million remaining in the account, according to the report.

The US initially set up an account in the Qatar National Bank in January to take in funds from entities looking to buy authorised oil and other minerals from Venezuela. Approximately $500 million was initially deposited into that account, with almost all of it distributed back to Venezuelan entities by late January, when a separate, dedicated US Treasury-controlled account was set up to handle future transactions.

The current account, controlled directly by the US Department of the Treasury, has taken in more than $12 billion in funds from about 20 depositors, whose identities are redacted in the State Department's report. Approximately 99 percent of those funds were related to the purchase of oil, according to the report.

By the end of September, nearly all of those funds had been distributed to a set of Venezuelan banks, to be used in foreign exchange interventions, transactions where banks sell those dollars to reduce the amount of local currency floating around and prop up the currency's value, in this case the Venezuelan bolivar.

The report is heavily redacted and does not provide details about the final recipients of the more than $12 billion in funds that was distributed in Venezuela, although it does note that approximately $9.4 billion went to 'legal entities' and $2.9 billion to 'individuals'.

Trump has made Venezuela a central part of his political narrative, touting the revenue he said the US would receive from sales of the country's oil during campaigning in the run-up to the midterm elections held earlier this month. Venezuelan rights activists have expressed concern that Washington may give outsized importance to oil revenues and take little interest in backing democratic reforms after the removal of Maduro.