Sens. Ron Wyden, Elizabeth Warren and Sheldon Whitehouse sent Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of State Marco Rubio a letter demanding a full accounting of more than $13 billion in Venezuelan oil revenue held in U.S.-controlled accounts.
Venezuela’s own transparency portal lists a single $300 million transfer, while a State Department official has told Congress that roughly $3 billion reached Venezuela for salaries and oil-sector supplies, leaving close to $10 billion unaccounted for.
The same sanctions framework that keeps the oil fund opaque also governs whether Venezuelan families can send remittances through newly authorized banks or keep relying on the informal networks that still carry about 85% of that money.
Seven weeks after congressional investigators opened their own review of Venezuela’s oil money, three Senate Democrats are pressing Washington on a question that keeps resurfacing without a clear answer: where did more than $13 billion actually go?
A Question Congress Keeps Asking
In a letter first reported by The Washington Post, Wyden, Warren and Whitehouse pressed Bessent and Rubio for specifics on how the oil revenue is tracked, who controls it and how it has been spent since Washington assumed control of Venezuela’s exports earlier this year. The letter follows a tense House Financial Services Committee hearing in which Bessent sidestepped repeated questions from Rep. Sean Casten and would only confirm a claim Rubio had made back in June: that the funds sit in an account subject to an ongoing KPMG audit whose results have never reached Congress or the public.
How Washington Ended Up Holding Venezuela’s Money
The arrangement traces back to the U.S. military raid that captured Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3, 2026. Within days, the administration moved to take control of Venezuelan oil sales, and an executive order set up a custodial structure under which the revenue technically still belongs to Venezuela but cannot move without Washington’s approval. State Department official Michael Kozak summed up that leverage bluntly in testimony to lawmakers: “It’s their money, but … they have to get our permission.”
Abandoned oil wells are pictured in Lake Maracaibo, Zulia state, Venezuela, on September 7, 2026. US energy firms on September 02, 2026, signed a raft of multi-billion-dollar deals with Venezuela, days after the South American country agreed to grant the United States control of a huge chunk of its vast oil reserves. (Credit: Photo by Rene Gutierrez / AFP via Getty Images)
The Math That Doesn’t Add Up
That leverage is exactly what Democrats say has gone unchecked. Kozak told lawmakers in April that roughly $3 billion had reached Venezuela to cover government salaries and oil-sector supplies, a figure the administration hasn’t updated since. Measured against a revenue tally north of $13 billion, that gap works out to roughly $10 billion with no public accounting — and Venezuela’s own government tracking site lists exactly one transfer, $300 million, dated to March. The Government Accountability Office opened a formal review of the fund in late July, seeking the specific bank accounts involved, the fees charged and the safeguards meant to prevent fraud; Treasury has said the money is reaching Venezuela without delay but hasn’t released balances, audit findings or disbursement records.
A President Who Keeps Raising the Number Himself
Trump hasn’t done much to quiet the questions. Asked aboard Air Force One in late July whether $13 billion was the right figure, he said the real number was probably higher and claimed the revenue had covered the cost of the operation “many times over,” without detailing how the money had actually been spent.
A Donor in the Room
Money isn’t the only conflict-of-interest question attached to the deal. Back in January, Sen. Adam Schiff and 13 fellow Senate Democrats wrote to the White House asking officials to disclose any financial stakes in companies now profiting from Venezuelan oil. The letter came after CNN reported that a Vitol executive, John Addison, attended a White House meeting on the oil sales weeks before his firm secured the first authorized sale of Venezuelan crude; Addison is also one of Trump’s largest campaign donors.
Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodriguez (C), US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum (L) and Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace Diosdado Cabello react during a meeting at the Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas on March 4, 2026. US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on March 4, 2026, became the latest senior Trump administration official to visit Venezuela, as Washington pushes to ramp up oil and mineral production in the country. (Credit: Photo by Federico PARRA// AFP via Getty Images)
Why Families Sending Money Home Are Watching Too
The same sanctions machinery that keeps the oil fund opaque also shapes a far more personal transaction: how Venezuelan families receive money from relatives abroad. Roughly $6 billion flowed into Venezuela in remittances last year, about half of it from the United States, and an estimated 85% of it still moves through unlicensed channels because of steep fees and unfavorable exchange rates in the legal system. That began to shift in April, when regulators reopened correspondent banking with Venezuela’s central bank and three state banks, the first legal opening for dollar transfers in roughly seven years. A separate authorization covering relief payments tied to the twin June earthquakes — which killed thousands of people and, according to U.N. estimates, caused billions of dollars in damage — is set to expire on Oct. 23.
Both systems sit inside the same Treasury-administered sanctions architecture built around Venezuela since Washington took control of the country’s oil exports, and advocates argue the parallel is telling: if lawmakers can’t get a full accounting of a multibillion-dollar government account, ordinary families have little reason to trust that the channels now open to them will stay open.
No Deadline, No Documents
The administration hasn’t set a date to respond to the senators’ letter, and the GAO’s review carries no publication timeline of its own. Until one of them produces paperwork, the fight over Venezuela’s oil money looks set to keep running on two parallel tracks — one in congressional hearing rooms, the other in the remittance lines Venezuelan families depend on every month.