About this episode

The episode explores the fate of Venezuela's oil revenues and the legal complexities surrounding its sovereign wealth.

When the United States took control of Venezuela's oil exports in early 2026, it collected an estimated $13 billion in crude sales — but the official ledger in Caracas records almost none of it, and six months on there is still no public accounting of where the money went. In this video we look at what happened to Venezuela's sovereign wealth: the missing oil revenues now sitting in an offshore account in Qatar, the four billion dollars of Venezuelan gold frozen in the vaults of the Bank of England that no one can legally claim, and the court-ordered auction that handed Citgo's parent company to an affiliate of Paul Singer's Elliott Management for nearly $6 billion. Along the way we explain the legal machinery that makes all of this possible — the alter ego doctrine, sovereign immunity and the Bancec ruling, the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, and the "one voice" principle in English law — and the broader lesson for anyone trying to understand sovereign assets: a nation's wealth held abroad is only yours for as long as someone else's courts, banks and vaults agree that it is. We also cover the aftermath of the June earthquakes, the international relief effort, and why the…

People in this episode

Host: Patrick Boyle

Topics covered

• Venezuela's oil money
• sovereign wealth
• international law
• court disputes
• economic sanctions
• governance

Keywords

• Venezuela
• oil exports
• sovereign wealth
• legal machinery
• international relief
• governance
• economic sanctions

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: United States, Bank of England, Citgo, Elliott Management

Books & works: Statistics For The Trading Floor, Derivatives For The Trading Floor

Places: Venezuela, Qatar

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