A massive oil deal between the U.S. and Venezuelan governments has revived the profile of Alejandro Betancourt, a businessman under investigation in Spain and Switzerland on suspicion of laundering billions of dollars out of Venezuela and into the European financial system.

On Monday, the White House announced details of a new deal with interim President Delcy Rodríguez giving the U.S. majority control over 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil. The deal comes after the January U.S. military seizure of former President Nicolás Maduro, who is currently jailed in New York.

Venezuela’s interim authorities granted North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), a privately held company and the second-largest private Venezuelan oil producer, 100-year concessions – the permits that allow for the exploration and production of crude – for 17 oil fields, according to the press release. The deal guarantees the U.S. access to 20% of the crude with right of first refusal to buy the remaining 80%.

Alejandro Betancourt is actively under investigation in Switzerland and Spain. Image: Alejandro Betancourt

Betancourt, a Venezuelan who attended Boston’s Suffolk University, is a majority shareholder in NABEP, according to ICIJ partner El País. In 2018, the businessman was also under investigation in the U.S. for theft of more than $1 billion from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, though no charges were ever filed.

As recently as May, Betancourt was living in the United Kingdom and fighting a Swiss extradition request over an investigation into alleged money laundering, the Financial Times reported. At the same time, authorities in Spain were also investigating his company Derwick Associates.

In 2020, BuzzFeed News’ and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ FinCEN Files investigation revealed how Betancourt and several other young Venezuelan businessmen known for their ties to the government moved vast sums of public money, including funds intended for housing and other basic services, out of the struggling Latin American country. The reporting was based on a leak of thousands of suspicious activity reports filed by banks to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

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Data from the FinCEN Files showed that Derwick used accounts at JPMorgan to move at least $2.1 million in 2011 and 2012 and that the bank processed other transactions of undisclosed amounts for Derwick and its managers at least into 2013. The files also showed that transactions between 2009 and 2017 involving Derwick Associates and flagged as suspicious amounted to $7.6 million.

In 2018, the U.S. Justice Department charged a senior Derwick executive in an alleged $1.2 billion bribery and money-laundering scheme. Betancourt, who was in his 20s when he co-founded Derwick with a younger cousin, was cited in the criminal complaint as an unnamed co-conspirator, according to reports by the Miami Herald, an ICIJ partner.

In its statement about its new oil venture with Venuezela, the White House did not mention Betancourt as the owner of NABEP, nor did it make any mention of the businessman’s current and past investigations.