Venezuela: New Landscape

On January 3, 2026, in less than three hours, American special forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in Caracas, before transferring them to a federal prison in New York.

Never before had a sitting head of State been removed from his palace to be incarcerated and tried by the justice system of another country. In New York, international law gave way to criminal law, and Nicolás Maduro is no longer considered a head of State, but rather a gang leader, prosecuted for narcoterrorism and trafficking in weapons of war. His wife, for her part, faces charges of conspiracy to import cocaine.

On the very night of the capture, the Venezuelan Supreme Tribunal of Justice noted a “temporary” absence of the head of State and instructed Vice President Delcy Rodríguez to assume the interim presidency. She took the oath of office on January 5 before the National Assembly.

Six months later, on June 24, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.5 on the Richter scale struck northern Venezuela, following an initial tremor of magnitude 7.2. It is the most violent seismic event the country has recorded since 1900. The epicenter was located in Yaracuy state, about 200 kilometers west of Caracas, but human casualties were concentrated in Greater Caracas and along the coast of La Guaira state, where eight hospitals were severely damaged. The capital’s international airport was closed, tsunami warnings were issued as far as Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, and NASA imagery recorded nearly 60,000 damaged or destroyed buildings.

As of July 19, the Venezuelan government reported over 5,000 dead, 16,700 injured, and 18,000 displaced. The United Nations, for its part, estimated the number of missing people at around 50,000 and calculated the damages at 6.7 billion dollars.

Let us add to this picture a detail no one is discussing: the Venezuelan Constitution grants an interim leader, in the case of a temporary absence of the head of State, only 90 days, renewable just once. Yet, since early July, that period has already expired. No election has been called, no authority has noted this situation, and Washington has made it clear that it sees no urgency in organizing elections.

The political reality is therefore as follows: a government whose constitutional mandate has expired is governing a country with no electoral timetable, deprived of its main airport, and grieving the worst catastrophe in its modern history.

On paper, Venezuela should be paralyzed, but what is occurring is precisely the opposite. While constitutional legitimacy is stalled, investment banks have already sprung into action.

I. Money moves forward, legitimacy will have to wait

Paradoxically, it is precisely the fragility of the Rodríguez government that is accelerating business. Aware that her time is short, lacking an electoral base, and facing the astronomical cost of reconstruction, Delcy Rodríguez must provide immediate guarantees to the markets to keep capital in the country and hope to remain in power. Venezuela thus recognizes a debt of nearly 240 billion dollars, exceeding the 150 to 200 billion that markets had anticipated. This would be the largest sovereign debt restructuring in modern history, far ahead of the 2012 Greek default and the Argentine precedent.

To lead this offensive, Caracas entrusted its interests to the American investment bank Centerview Partners, with a clear objective: to secure a global agreement with creditors before the end of the year, even before the legal foundations of the regime are stabilized.

Furthermore, the macroeconomic context accompanying the operation is unprecedented, as the Venezuelan economy is valued at around 100 billion dollars—just over a quarter of the 370 billion from the last full fiscal year of the Chávez era in 2012. This new valuation raises the debt ratio to over 200% of GDP.

We have two opposing effects here that open two perspectives:

• In the short term, this is a weapon for Venezuela: recognizing a collapsing GDP establishes a calculation base that automatically imposes massive losses on creditors, since no credible trajectory allows for the payment of more than double the wealth produced annually.

• In the long term, it is a surrender: the government enshrines the country's ruin as the starting point for all future commitments and renounces selling any narrative of recovery.

Which of the two perspectives will prevail depends on a single variable: the time horizon of the signee.

A government planning for ten years does not negotiate this way. The Rodríguez government, for its part, buys a few months and pays for those months with the country's resources and future value—rational from its own standpoint, but ruinous for Venezuela.

In April 2026, the IMF and the World Bank restored relations with Caracas after a seven-year freeze. From a technical standpoint, this rapprochement makes it possible to initiate a full assessment of the Venezuelan economy and consider unlocking five billion dollars in Special Drawing Rights previously frozen (SDRs are not physical currency, but a reserve asset that member countries exchange for hard currencies to replenish liquidity).

However, a crucial fact alters the nature of this rapprochement: the debt sustainability analysis does not bear the IMF's signature. The institution maintains technical contacts with Caracas, but clarified that it is not conducting the restructuring led by Centerview.

This nuance is important, as a debt sustainability analysis is not a mere accounting formality. It is the document through which the IMF establishes the level of debt a country can bear without defaulting or destroying its economy and, therefore, the amount of losses creditors must accept. By establishing this ceiling, the IMF protects the debtor State against excessive market demands. Without this protection, the Rodríguez government is not negotiating its macroeconomic trajectory, but will undergo a market-dictated adjustment against which it stands in an extremely fragile position.

The absence of an official framework accentuates another, even more serious vulnerability: legitimacy risk. The viability plan is merely a discussion framework, and no exchange offer has been formalized. An exchange offer is the operation by which a State proposes to its creditors the substitution of old bonds with new ones, at a reduced value, lower rates, or extended maturity periods. Now, a bond issuance authorized by an executive whose constitutional mandate has expired is legally contestable. A future government resulting from regular elections could attempt to invoke the doctrine of odious debt to refuse to honor these commitments. However, it should be clarified that the doctrine of odious debt is neither a customary norm nor codified in a treaty, and its invocations before international courts have failed almost systematically, even in contexts more favorable than Venezuela's. But for creditors, the mere prospect of years of litigation and unmarketable bonds is already enough to degrade their value.

The uncertainty, therefore, does not concern the viability of the restructuring, but the contractual mechanism chosen to neutralize this risk of repudiation. Two options are pitted against each other behind the scenes:

• The classic budgetary model: the new bonds are guaranteed by the Republic of Venezuela and paid out of the general budget. This is the standard model, but it directly exposes investors to the risk of an elected government rejecting the deal.

• The physical collateral model: to protect themselves from political risk, creditors demand that reimbursement be backed by physical export flows of crude oil or gas. Technically, an escrow account is created outside Venezuela, managed by a third-party bank. International buyers deposit payments into this account; creditors are served first, and only the residual surplus reverts to the State.

The nature of this clause is the cornerstone of the operation, but it remains confidential. One certainty prevails, however: Venezuelan bonds are denominated in dollars, essentially governed by New York State law, and largely held by American funds. Any exchange offer must therefore be authorized by Washington to be tradable on the market. The authority validating the operation is located neither in Caracas nor in multilateral forums, but in the United States Department of the Treasury.

II. The OFAC, or how to transform the law

The most volatile instrument of American geopolitics is neither a treaty nor a contract, but a unilateral and revocable administrative document: the license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). This agency of the United States Treasury possesses the unique capacity to draw the line between what constitutes a legitimate international transaction and what constitutes a financial crime subject to heavy sanctions.

The mechanism operates under two regimes:

• The general license, which applies automatically to any entity meeting the criteria established by Washington, without the need for prior procedures.

• The specific license, which is an exception requiring an extensive application process, case-by-case granting, and constant supervision.

The instability of this mechanism is real and manifests primarily in mega energy projects, where the industrial pace of infrastructure collides with the political pace of Washington.

The Dragon gas field, a transboundary deposit of around 120 billion cubic meters in Venezuelan waters, is the most glaring example of this:

• In 2023: Trinidad and Tobago, whose economy depends on the export of liquefied natural gas, faces the depletion of its domestic reserves. The island requests and obtains an OFAC license to explore the Dragon field in partnership with the Venezuelan state company PDVSA, alongside Shell and its national company, NGC. For the sector, this represents a sign of major investments, but after some time, the process collapses.

• In April 2025: following the revocation of American company Chevron's license, Washington revokes the Trinidadian licenses relating to Dragon and the second transboundary field, Cocuina-Manakin, granting only a wind-down period until the end of May. Overnight, the project is frozen.

• In October 2025: after intense negotiations, the Treasury grants a precarious extension via a six-month license that does not authorize extraction, but only negotiation with Caracas and PDVSA, according to a phased process in which American participation is mandatory and financial flows are strictly controlled.

• In February 2026: OFAC alters its position again and issues general licenses paving the way for non-American companies to operate with PDVSA, redefining for the fourth time the legal framework of the very same gas field.

Four legal regimes in three years for a single gas field. An OFAC license is not a legal framework; it is a geopolitical control valve that Washington opens and closes at will, turning law into a tool of asymmetric sovereignty.

Since January 2026, the Treasury has been methodically rebuilding the legal framework of the Venezuelan economy. Instead of lifting sanctions, Washington implemented a series of targeted licenses to orchestrate a supervised, sector-by-sector reopening on a continuous basis:

• Production flows: License 46 authorizes established US entities to export Venezuelan crude oil, while License 47 regulates the sale of US diluents essential for its refining.

• Infrastructure: Licenses 48 and 30B release access to goods, technologies, and services necessary to restore the oil, gas, and electricity sectors, as well as port and airport operations. A telling detail: License 48 expressly prohibits the formation of new joint ventures on Venezuelan territory. You can repair, supply, and operate, but forming partnerships is forbidden.

• Investment and mining: License 49 authorizes the negotiation of conditional investment contracts; License 50 covers the oil and gas operations of designated entities; and Licenses 51, 54, and 55 extend the regime to the mining sector, notably gold.

• Finance: In April, Licenses 56 and 57 allow the negotiation of contracts with the government itself and certain transactions with specifically designated Venezuelan banks. General License 58, dated May 5, 2026, authorizes the provision of certain services to the Venezuelan government in connection with debt restructuring. This is the legal basis for Centerview's mandate.

Behind this system, two lock-in mechanisms structure the entire setup:

• The first blocks financial flows: payments intended for sanctioned Venezuelan entities must pass through US-controlled accounts. Caracas can produce, but Washington holds the money.

• The second blocks sovereignty: contracts concluded with the Venezuelan State or PDVSA are subject to US law and the jurisdiction of US courts.

Washington no longer settles for merely choosing who has the right to trade with Venezuela. It decides where the money goes, which law applies, which court arbitrates, and changes these rules with a simple update.

However, a line must be drawn, otherwise the picture would be misleading. The American blockade is legal and financial; it is not territorial. Maduro is imprisoned in New York, but what remains of the Chavista apparatus, the armed forces, and mid-level PDVSA staff still control the valves, production facilities, and roads. Moreover, the dark fleet carrying discounted crude oil to Asia, with China in the lead, has never stopped operating, and a portion of production continues to escape the licensed circuit.

Furthermore, this intermediary economy is non-banking. Since 2024, PDVSA has required its spot buyers to make advance payments in USDT, the digital token issued by Tether and pegged to the US dollar. The magnitude of this shift goes beyond oil: consulting firm Ecoanalítica estimates that between June 11 and July 13, 2026, 1.389 billion USDT were traded on Binance's peer-to-peer platform in Venezuela alone—roughly 44 million per day, a volume equivalent to nearly three-quarters of the country's monthly oil export value.

One could see this as a flaw in the American mechanism, but that would mean misjudging Uncle Sam. Thus, on January 11, 2026, one week after Maduro's capture, Tether froze over 182 million dollars spread across five wallets on the Tron network, following a formal request from US judicial authorities. A dollar-pegged token is not a sovereign currency: it is a liability of a private company equipped with a kill switch.

The digital channel, therefore, does not remove Venezuela from Washington's control, but shifts the point of enforcement from the correspondent bank to the token issuer. The escrow account described above already has its digital counterpart, and it is just as revocable as an OFAC license.

III. How to enter Washington’s “black list”?

The new framework redefines access to Venezuelan resources. Geography and history are no longer enough; one must now fit into one of the categories of the US Treasury bureaucracy.

One case falls outside any category: integration by right. Thus, the US federal states, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands are automatically included in the customs and logistics system.

There remain three actual modes of admission:

• Technical precedence, represented by Curaçao and Aruba: their refineries and terminals were designed for heavy Venezuelan crude, the flow never entirely stopped, and Washington merely validates a pre-existing industrial reality. Admission is not negotiated; it is noted.

• The hub function, represented by Panama: a purely logistical admission, dictated by the centrality of the canal and its maritime services. The territory provides not a resource, but a mandatory passage.

• The negotiated license, represented by Trinidad and Tobago: this is the most complex, most discussed, and most misunderstood case.

A fourth case, that of Colombia, follows a distinct logic, as access occurs via the land border and direct diplomatic normalization between Bogotá and Caracas. The mechanism is real, but it is not transposable to any island territory, which is why I set it aside.

Analysis of the Trinidadian case oscillates between two misconceptions:

• Political surrender in the face of cash needs, for some.

• Simple placement under guardianship, for others.

The reality is more subtle, as Trinidad did not sign any partnership with Venezuela, and the Maduro regime, in fact, had frozen joint gas projects at the end of 2025 following Port-of-Spain's public support for the US military deployment in the region. Trinidad obtained authorization from Washington, and under the aegis of that authorization, it is Shell's interests that are at work, with the group already pushing to expand the perimeter to other transboundary fields.

If Trinidad managed to negotiate State-to-State, it was also because it possesses a unique asset: its infrastructure. The decline of its domestic production left the mammoth Atlantic LNG complex, partially owned by Shell, in chronic undercapacity. Trinidad thus provides the liquefaction plant that Venezuela lacks. Its status is neither that of an ally nor a vassal, but that of a tolerated processing hub within the American perimeter. For a small island economy, this is the best possible deal. But my previous article on Panama showed what admission into the US orbit costs: alignment comes at a price and guarantees nothing.

When the gas is exported, the revenues will not go to Caracas. They will pass through a Treasury-validated escrow fund under US oversight. What Washington reopened for Venezuela is not a free market, but a closed circuit, at least in its legal dimension.

However, this system runs into a major unknown. Of the 240 billion in debt, China and Russia hold a massive share, largely backed by oil.

Beijing and Moscow have an objective interest in crude oil being extracted so that restructuring can begin, making scenarios of frontal legal blocking unlikely. But the exact value and nature of Sino-Russian claims remain secret, and it is this hidden value that will determine the final balance.

One hypothesis may prove compelling. Indeed, a significant portion of these credits might not be repayable in dollars, but in barrels. If that is the case, Beijing has no reason to oppose the Centerview-led restructuring, since it is already being served outside the licensed circuit by the discounted cargoes that the dark fleet transports continuously. This would explain a coexistence that would otherwise seem paradoxical: that of a top-tier creditor that has remained silent and a physical flow that has never ceased. This would not be a flaw in the US system, but rather the portion of the deposit that Washington chose not to control.

IV. The future: What could change in five years?

• Security: The US militarization of the Caribbean Basin is taking root for the long term. It will reroute drug trafficking channels and place French territories in an ambiguous situation: a living and trading space for their inhabitants, but an external operations ground for others.

• The second pole: The basin is not reorganizing around Venezuela alone. On its eastern border, Guyana is recording one of the fastest oil growth rates in the world, driven by ExxonMobil, targeting over one million barrels per day by 2027—a volume higher than current licensed Venezuelan production. The Essequibo dispute adds a point of military tension whose resolution will largely depend on the fate of the Venezuelan interim regime. Georgetown is already attracting the capital, oil services, and US strategic attention that Venezuela will only recover, at best, in the background. Any regional projection that ignores this pole is incomplete, and French Guiana forms its immediate border.

• The value: The United Nations estimates earthquake damage at 6.7 billion dollars. Reconstruction is shaping up to be the Caribbean project of the decade, and the temptation will be great to send Guadeloupe's construction sector there to capitalize on its rare expertise in earthquake resistance. This idea must be nipped in the bud, as the construction sector is precisely the most ill-suited to position itself in this market, for three reasons:

  • An insurmountable lack of liquidity: exporting public works requires massive pre-financing capacity. Yet, according to figures presented at the July 2026 Territorial Conference on Public Action, public authority debt owed to local companies is approaching 180 million euros. A sector unable to get paid for its invoices in its own territory lacks the financial strength to bear the financial risk of a defaulting State.

  • Customer insolvency: At this stage, the payer does not exist. If the escrow model is adopted, oil revenue will serve to pay off sovereign creditors long before funding construction projects. Payment for work would thus depend on external backers, adding an unsustainable layer of uncertainty for an SME.

  • Overwhelming competitive asymmetry: on large-scale projects, "local" engineering will go head-to-head with Chinese, Turkish, Brazilian, and Colombian giants.

• Status: The precedent set by Trinidad and Tobago creates a regional norm that can be summarized as follows: in this region, economic action capacity now depends on a foreign administrative authorization obtained through negotiations conducted in one's own name. Territories that cannot—or will not—negotiate in their own name will remain subject to the decisions of others, even when those decisions apply to their waters, supplies, and sea lanes.

The value generated by Venezuelan reconstruction will be captured in Port-of-Spain, Colón, or even New York.

Marco Alves

Master in Political Science from the University of Paris West Nanterre, in International and European Law from Grenoble Alpes University, and in International Relations and Business from the Institute of International Relations of Paris (ILERI).

He has professional experience in 30 countries, including Brazil, where he worked for 10 years (notably for the State Government of Pernambuco as a development specialist). He has worked for NGOs across the African continent as a specialist in economic recovery in post-conflict zones.

Today, he serves as the director of an international consulting firm specializing in social sciences and social engineering, with operations in Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali, and Niger. He is also the correspondent for France and Europe for the radio station CBN Recife, President of the Assembly of IFSRA (Institute for Social Research in Africa), a social entrepreneur, speaker, and mentor for the international organization MakeSense, and a consultant in strategic intelligence and risk management for the corporate sector.