Behind the Investigations Into the Venezuelan Oilman Partnering With Trump

from the NYT

Prosecutors in Spain targeted the Venezuelan oilman Alejandro Betancourt in one money laundering inquiry. Swiss authorities investigated him in another. Both countries requested his extradition from Britain, where Mr. Betancourt lives in a 14-bedroom country estate, and British authorities arrested him less than a year ago, barring him from traveling abroad.

All of it hardly mattered.

As part of the Trump administration’s takeover of Venezuela’s oil industry, the United States is forming an extraordinary partnership with Mr. Betancourt. Under the arrangement, the Pentagon could seek to take a large stake in his company, a deal that defies easy comparison in recent American history, oil analysts say.

That would make Mr. Betancourt the main partner of the Trump administration as it pushes not just to control the sale of Venezuela’s oil, but to own a chunk of it directly. And it would place Mr. Betancourt at the core of Venezuela’s deepening transformation from a sovereign nation into essentially a vassal state of the United States.

 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio brought up Mr. Betancourt in a White House meeting in the spring. He had decided that Mr. Betancourt could be a viable partner for the United States because he had experience forging oil deals in Venezuela and increasing production there, said a person familiar with U.S. efforts to support Mr. Betancourt.

That meant Mr. Betancourt would need to be able to travel freely. Officials from the State Department and the Justice Department intervened in the Swiss investigation by reaching out to Swiss counterparts to persuade them not to go forward with the extradition, according to people familiar with the matter.

They also asked Britain’s government to ease travel restrictions on Mr. Betancourt, the people said, allowing him to travel to Venezuela and to the United States to meet with Trump administration officials. The British government was reluctant but eventually agreed to the request.

Under the deal with the Trump administration, a financing office within the Pentagon plans to partner with Mr. Betancourt’s oil company, North American Blue Energy Partners, or NABEP, which is being granted 100-year concessions to operate 17 oil fields in Venezuela.

Mr. Betancourt does not own the fields, but the concessions give him the exclusive rights to exploit them — and they are potentially enormous. In all, these oil fields have estimated reserves of 65 billion barrels, nearly as much as all the proven reserves in the United States.

“The United States has wreaked havoc on us” with this deal, said Rafael Ramírez, a former Venezuelan energy minister. He called the unusual arrangement with Mr. Betancourt “grotesque” and “unsustainable in the long run” because it was done in secret with an authoritarian government many Venezuelans view as illegitimate, echoing criticism across Venezuela’s normally polarized political spectrum.

Sara Chouraqui, a spokeswoman for Mr. Betancourt and the general counsel for his oil company, rejected the criticism.

“To Alejandro, this isn’t political,” Ms. Chouraqui said. “The fact that he is now in a position to revitalize the country’s long-dormant economic potential is in itself a win, not for any one political party, but for all of Venezuela.”

This article is based on interviews with oil executives, current and former U.S. officials, and former Venezuelan officials, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.

In settling on Mr. Betancourt, the Trump administration opted against partnering directly with a U.S. oil giant like Chevron, which has had extensive operations in Venezuela for decades, or Petroleos de Venezuela, the country’s state-owned oil company.

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