Trump's Offshore Treasury for Seized Venezuelan Oil
$500 million in oil revenue bypasses Congress, courts, and the US Treasury to land in Doha banks linked to Kushner's private equity empire.
The United States just sold half a billion dollars worth of Venezuelan oil. The proceeds went to a bank account in Qatar.
Let that sink in.
Qatar. The same Qatar that pumped $200 million into Jared Kushner’s private equity shop. The administration calls this arrangement neutral and secure. The rest of the world has another word for it.
The Executive Order signed January 9th invented a new legal category called Foreign Government Deposit Funds. It declared that allowing American courts to touch this money would constitute a threat to national security. Then it routed the cash to Doha, beyond the jurisdiction of Congress, the GAO, or any judge who might ask inconvenient questions.
Senator Warren put it plainly. There is no basis in law for a president to set up an offshore account that he controls.
Naturally, that’s exactly what happened.
Venezuela sits on 300 billion barrels of proven reserves. The largest on Earth. Production has collapsed to roughly one million barrels per day. That’s a third of capacity. The upgraders are offline. The engineers emigrated a decade ago. The country cannot physically move its own crude without importing light diluents from the Texas Gulf Coast.
So the liberation of Venezuelan oil requires buying American oil first.
The first sale netted $500 million. Sounds impressive until you realize that covers approximately two weeks of national food imports. Rebuilding production to meaningful levels will require $10 to $15 billion annually for the next decade. There is no plan for this. There is no budget. There is only discretion.
That word appears in the Executive Order like a nervous tic.
Meanwhile, Venezuela owes $170 billion to international creditors. ConocoPhillips holds arbitration awards worth $12 billion. ExxonMobil is owed $1.6 billion. These are legal debts validated by international tribunals. President Trump told the executives to their faces that the losses were their fault and should be considered a good writeoff.
Clean Slate Doctrine. Property rights exist until they become inconvenient.
Exxon’s CEO called Venezuela uninvestable. The administration’s response was to threaten to block Exxon from returning at all.
Chevron, which kept operating under sanctions waivers, is now the partner. The compliant one. The administration wants production increased by 50 percent in two years. With what workforce? With what infrastructure? With what capital from companies just told their existing claims are worthless?
And then there’s the new interim president. Not María Corina Machado, the opposition leader who won the primaries. Not Edmundo González, the president-elect recognized by the democratic opposition. The United States installed Delcy Rodríguez. Maduro’s former vice president. A figure so embedded in the sanctioned Bolivarian structure that her selection shocked even regime critics.
Intelligence assessments described her as pliant.
That’s the word. Not democratic. Not legitimate. Pliant.
International law experts aren’t bothering with diplomatic hedging. Oxford’s Professor Janina Dill wrote that the illegality of this operation is beyond debate. One hundred fifty aircraft. Suppression of air defenses. Delta Force operators breaching a presidential compound. Seventy-five guards killed. This wasn’t a police action. It was regime change with a legal veneer thin enough to see through.
But the revenue keeps flowing. To Qatar. Where nobody can audit it.
The cozy relationship between the Trump family and Qatari money is not a conspiracy theory. It’s a matter of public record. Affinity Partners. The Qatar Investment Authority. Billions in Gulf commitments secured during presidential tours. The question isn’t whether conflicts of interest exist. The question is whether anyone in a position of authority cares.
The answer, apparently, is no.
Venezuela’s flag still flies. The oil flows to American refineries. The money flows to Doha. The oversight flows nowhere.
Somewhere a finance minister is looking at this arrangement and taking notes.
The next failed state won’t even require an invasion. Just a creative executive order and a friendly bank in the Gulf.