{"id":24766,"date":"2026-05-05T14:45:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T14:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/24766\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T14:45:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T14:45:15","slug":"in-venezuela-trump-vowed-to-show-accountability-but-secret-oil-deals-linger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/24766\/","title":{"rendered":"In Venezuela, Trump Vowed to Show Accountability. But Secret Oil Deals Linger."},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">In 2023, for example, a shell company connected to Mr. Malpica became the second largest exporter of Venezuela\u2019s crude, just behind Chevron, a multinational firm that has produced oil in Venezuela for a century, the documents show.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Copies of some of the contracts show that the shell company, China-registered Hangzhou Energy, received oil from PDVSA on highly favorable and unusual terms despite not having any history of business activity. A contract for 2022 shows that Hangzhou was allowed to sell about a tenth of the country\u2019s export volumes that year in return for providing the government with an unspecified amount of \u201chumanitarian aid.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">It is unclear how much aid Hangzhou eventually delivered or what it included. Ostensibly set up in response to American sanctions, oil-for-food deals similar to the one obtained by Hangzhou became a major source of corruption during Mr. Maduro\u2019s final years, siphoning billions of dollars from the state at a time of humanitarian crisis, according to <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/ve.usembassy.gov\/treasury-disrupts-corruption-network-stealing-from-venezuelas-food-distribution-program-clap\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">the U.S. government<\/a> and <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/armando.info\/la-mala-leche-de-los-clap\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">investigations<\/a> by a Venezuelan news outlet, Armando.Info.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">An email to Hangzhou\u2019s operations manager, Zhang Junling, went unanswered.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Though Hangzhou\u2019s legal representatives were ostensibly in China, in practice it was Mr. Malpica and a partner, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/10\/world\/americas\/delcy-rodriguez-venezuela-economy-trump.html\" title=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ramos Carretero<\/a>, who represented Hangzhou in meetings with PDVSA, according to several PDVSA officials and people in Venezuelan oil industry, implying the two men were the company\u2019s ultimate beneficiaries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Hangzhou also had other unusual and lucrative payment arrangements.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Most oil buyers had to pay PDVSA in dollars. Hangzhou, however, paid Bandes, the development bank, in bol\u00edvars, the local currency, according to PDVSA documents, internal messages seen by The New York Times and interviews with Venezuelan oil officials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2023, for example, a shell company connected to Mr. Malpica became the second largest exporter of Venezuela\u2019s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6238,12565,8,12667,9,12668,6241,14134,7,1071,13,6237],"class_list":{"0":"post-24766","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-donald-j","9":"tag-embargoes-and-sanctions","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-maduro","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-nicolas","14":"tag-oil-petroleum-and-gasoline","15":"tag-petroleos-de-venezuela-sa","16":"tag-top-stories","17":"tag-trump","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-international-relations"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116522511466573451","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}