Were Half of Venezuela’s Oil Revenues Really Stolen? — Part I By Francisco R. Rodríguez Copyright © 2026 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved. -

Were Half of Venezuela’s Oil Revenues Really Stolen? — Part I By Francisco R. Rodríguez DENVER, Colorado, USA, Oct 21 2026 (IPS) - If you’ve been around Venezuelans for long enough, you know that we tend to speak in superlatives. We have the best baseball players, the most beautiful beaches, the tastiest arepas, and the wickedest dictators. But even being used to the scale of our superlatives didn’t quite prepare me for what I read in the May 5 edition of The New York Times, in a story called “In Venezuela, Trump Vowed to Show Accountability. Oil Deals Linger.” The story tells us that a network of shell companies controlled by Carlos Malpica (who is widely believed to be Maduro’s bagman) embezzled $11 billion of the country’s oil wealth in 2021 and 2022. In the Times’ words: “for every two dollars that Venezuela earned selling oil earlier this decade, one dollar was stolen, internal documents and official statistics show.” https://www.ipsnews.net/2026/10/were-half-of-venezuelas-oil-revenues-really-stolen-part-i/ Copyright © 2026 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved. -