Where’s the $12 Billion Extracted by the Trump Regime From Venezuela?

The U.S. has collected about $12 billion from Venezuela’s natural resource exports since President Donald Trump ordered the kidnapping of that country’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, back in January. The $12 billion number comes from a confidential report by the financial services firm KPMG, which was obtained by the New York Times. The “vast majority” of that money was apparently distributed back to Venezuela, according to the Times, but perhaps the most important sentence in the entire article comes in the second paragraph: “It is unclear if the money stayed in the country or who the ultimate recipients were.” The KPMG report was compiled for the U.S. government about the so-called “Venezuela Custody Account” run by the U.S. Treasury Department to handle money being extracted from the country. The account was initially set up to operate from Qatar, a country from which President Donald Trump received a luxury jet worth about $400 million in 2025. After an outcry from Democrats and ethics experts, an account was established at Citibank in New York. The kidnapping of Maduro and extraction of so much wealth from a sovereign country are clear violations of international law, but when you’re the U.S. government, there’s not exactly anyone to stop you. This new KPMG report appears to be light on information, according to the Times, falling well short of a proper audit. The U.S. State Department had previously promised Congress that quarterly audits would be taking place, according to House Democrats. Maduro was brought to the U.S. and has been charged with drug trafficking and torture. Trump’s ability to swiftly kidnap a foreign head of state and begin a process of pillaging the country’s resources is likely one of the major reasons he believed a war against Iran would be easy. Instead, the war with Iran has dragged on without any end in sight. Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps took credit for two tanker fires in the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, the kind of daily occurrence that’s largely ignored by most Americans after nine months of protracted conflict. Venezuela is yet another part of the world that many Americans don’t seem to hear much about anymore, despite all the shady things being done in their name there. The fact that Americans still don’t know what’s happening to all the money coming from that country’s resources is a huge red flag. Trump has repeatedly taken credit for getting oil out of the country, sometimes characterizing it as a friendly “gift.” The report from KPMG covers the period from Jan. 3, the date of Maduro’s kidnapping, to the end of September, according to the Times. About $12.26 billion has been deposited into the account, but it reportedly had a balance of about $170 million on Sept. 30. Again, the administration’s claim is that the money flowing through that account was “distributed back to Venezuela,” but there’s no basis on which to measure the accuracy of that claim. It’s not even clear what that phrasing actually means. Even if the money really is going back to Venezuela, that doesn’t mean it’s being used in a way that’s beneficial to society at large, nor that it’s not getting kicked back to people connected to the Trump regime. But for some reason the New York Times seems to take many of the report’s more odd claims at face value. From the Times: The speed of the disbursements described in the report lends some credence to previous claims by U.S. officials that they serve as mere custodians of the wealth that Venezuela derives from its natural resources, primarily oil. Just because money is moving quickly that doesn’t mean the U.S. is acting in good faith as “mere custodians”—especially if we don’t know where the money is ultimately winding up. The Times also seems to take the report at its word that a “majority of the money that was sent back to Venezuela from the custody account, $11.7 billion, was used to prop up the country’s national currency.” Gizmodo was unable to obtain a copy of the report for review, so who knows? Maybe Donald Trump is just a humanitarian and all of the money flowing through this Citibank account is being used for the good of humanity. Surely, a guy who does such things would be a shoe-in for the Nobel Peace Prize.