Venezuela FX auctions: who ended up with $11.7 billion in oil dollars

"We're taking in billions and billions of dollars a day," Donald Trump said of Venezuela on November 9. The next day, a KPMG report, then confidential, on the account where the United States holds that revenue became known, with different numbers: according to the report, $12.26 billion came in over nine months, about $45 million a day, and 95% went back to Caracas for Venezuela's central bank (BCV) to sell as foreign currency. If those figures are accurate, and no one outside the two governments has been able to check them, Washington kept not the money but the signature on every outflow, and the money ended up with buyers neither government has identified publicly.

Two figures no one can check

The gap is not a matter of nuance. Taken literally, the November 9 remark would bring in within a week what, according to KPMG, the account gathered in nine months.

Not even Venezuela's total exports reach that scale: Transparencia Venezuela estimated them at about $15.2 billion for the whole first half, under $100 million a day, and that includes sales by Chevron and other companies with their own licenses, which do not go through the account.

KPMG's figure is not beyond doubt either. The report is not an audit, and the firm says so itself: KPMG writes that its work does not constitute audit or attestation services and presents itself as a technical advisor to the State Department, although in June the secretary of state had told Congress that "every single disbursement" was audited by KPMG. And it does not square with independent estimates. Using export data, Transparencia Venezuela calculated that the fund would have received between $12.5 billion and $13.6 billion in the first half alone; the report records $12.26 billion in nine months.

The gap may come from the price actually collected, from costs deducted before deposit or from sales that bypass the account. With what has been made public, none of those explanations can be checked.

On November 12, the Venezuelan government published figures on its transparency portal that, from January to September, match the report's to the decimal: $12,263.7 million in revenue and $12,107.6 million in outflows.

Both sides of the account giving the same number is not independent verification.

According to the report, $11.7 billion went back to Venezuela at the BCV's request, $133 million was paid directly from the account, mostly to healthcare, energy and mining vendors, and $170 million was left on September 30. Executive Order 14373 defines those funds as "sovereign property" of Venezuela in U.S. custody and shields them from creditors (this August piece, in Spanish explains how), but it does not require their movements to be published: it authorizes the Treasury to report to Congress without requiring it.

What the report does show is who decides. State Department and Treasury officials sign off on every outflow after checking that the request meets "financial integrity criteria," and the dominant use, selling dollars into the Venezuelan market, was requested by the BCV and approved by Washington. Of what Trump said on November 9, "We're totally in charge" is the only part the document supports.

The cheap dollar went to whoever had an allocation

The interim government announced the circuit on January 16: oil revenue would go into the BCV and from there to private banks for the currency market, "exclusively" for strategic sectors, mainly raw materials and capital goods. On January 27, the BCV reported the first sales, $300 million "derived from hydrocarbon exports." The central bank sold them in 101 auctions through the end of March; after that, according to the KPMG report, it moved to handing them out bank by bank at a rate it sets itself, and the banks to their clients.

The price was not the same for everyone. In the first round, according to Ecoanalítica estimates, food and medicine buyers paid about 380 bolívares per dollar, other companies about 405 and individuals about 420; close to 80% of the dollars went to essential activities and 5% to individuals. On February 24, with the official rate at 407.37, banks were selling to individuals at between 437 and 465. That month, Venezuelan economists called for the BCV's published rate to reflect the auction results and for a single official rate.

Who gets in is the other half of the question. It has been reported, without confirmation from the BCV, that large food, healthcare, beverage and chemical companies get preferred access, while mid-sized drug, chemical and plastics manufacturers see their bids rejected without explanation and end up buying outside the auction, at a higher price, passing the cost on to their prices. In February, 58% of the mid-sized business owners surveyed by Conindustria said the lack of foreign currency was an obstacle to production.

The KPMG report publishes how much went to companies and how much to individuals, by sector and by bank, but no names.

That is where the gain lies, and it shows up in no account statement. An oil dollar sold by the BCV below what it is worth outside its channels is a transfer: it leaves the nation's revenue and lands with whoever got the allocation. Without the allocation list and the rate of each allocation, no one outside the two governments can measure it, or check that it went to the strategic sectors announced in January.

In Caracas, the trail goes cold

On the Venezuelan side, the money drops out of sight in the currency sales. In April, a State Department official told Congress that the disbursed money paid public-sector salaries and supplies for the oil industry; the KPMG report says 95% was sold as foreign currency. The two fit through the mechanism the report itself describes: the BCV collects bolívares for every dollar it sells, and those bolívares fund government spending, such as the public payroll.

The Venezuelan government presents it differently.

Its Transparencia Soberana portal, updated on November 12, classifies 99% of its outflows from January to November, $14.71 billion, as "salaries of public-sector workers and pensioners," and through September those outflows match month by month the account disbursements KPMG records. But the dollars, according to KPMG, went to the companies and individuals who bought them; what reached the payroll was bolívares, and the portal does not say how many or at what rate. Budget laws have gone more than a decade without official publication, and what is known of the 2026 budget comes from explanations given to the National Assembly in December 2025.

What can be pieced together is partial. On April 30, the "comprehensive minimum income" rose from $190 to $240 a month: $200 as a bonus and $40 as a food allowance, both outside the wage, so vacation pay and severance are still calculated on 130 bolívares, about 14 cents at the official rate of November 10. In October it was reported, without official confirmation, that public employees were paid that income with 131,550 bolívares, about $150 at that day's rate. The official portal assigns a single dollar figure to salaries and pensions; it does not split it between wages, bonuses and pensions or say how many bolívares it represented.

On imports, the U.S. Commerce Department records Venezuelan purchases of $2.963 billion in the first half, up 55% from a year earlier and the highest since 2015. That figure comes from a trading partner, not from the BCV.

Whoever got an allocation received dollars. Whoever is paid by the state receives bolívares: a bonus announced in dollars and a base wage that is not adjusted, in a year when the bolívar lost almost 65% of its official value between January and September and Síntesis Financiera expects prices to rise almost 300%.

The opacity did not start with the account. The 2020 Anti-Blockade Law, which made confidentiality the rule in managing state resources, remains in force: the National Assembly has not moved to repeal it, and the acting presidency has not declared it inapplicable. And the previous exchange-control regime left a precedent: in May 2013, the then president of the BCV acknowledged that at least $20 billion in hard currency had been allocated to shell firms, and in 2018 the case against the only former senior official of Cadivi, the currency agency, on trial had still not established, after more than thirty failed hearings, how and by whom hundreds of millions of dollars were diverted.

Nothing published suggests the same is happening in the 2026 auctions. Nor is there any way to rule it out while the allocation list remains unpublished.

What each government holds

The information needed to know who won exists, and much of it is in Washington. The deposits, the balance and the prices are there: every company that sells Venezuelan crude outside the United States under OFAC General License 46E reports to the State and Energy departments, every 90 days, the parties, quantities, values, destination and payments to the Venezuelan government. The license makes no provision for publishing any of it. And the list of buyers is there too: according to the report, the BCV passes Washington, and KPMG too, every sale transaction, with the tax ID (RIF) of whoever bought.

According to The New York Times, two trading houses, Trafigura and Vitol, accounted for 61% of the deposits; in the released report those names are redacted, and there are no prices or volumes per cargo. KPMG's federal contract, worth almost $15 million, is recorded as awarded under full and open competition, with a single offer received; according to the report, the account paid it $18.2 million on April 10.

Caracas holds the rest: the rate at which the BCV sold each dollar, which the report does not give, and exactly what the bolívares paid for. The presidency announced a platform in January for citizens to follow the use of oil revenue. In August, Transparencia Venezuela found no mechanism to learn the amount managed or where it went; the official record added up to about $300 million. On November 12, the government posted January-to-November totals on the Transparencia Soberana portal: $15.603 billion in revenue and $14.86 billion in outflows, with no buyers, no rates and no payroll breakdown.

Neither needs the other's permission to publish what it holds.

Secrecy is not a technical necessity. In 2003, Executive Order 13303 protected the Development Fund for Iraq with the same clause voiding any attachment. There, a board with representatives of the UN, the IMF, the World Bank and the Arab Fund approved KPMG as auditor after international competitive bidding and published its reports from July 2004. Those audits found incomplete records kept by U.S. agencies and unreconciled exported oil, and that became known because they were published. That fund came out of a Security Council mandate that does not exist for Venezuela.

The shield is the same; KPMG's role is not: in Iraq it audited, here it advises the State Department, and its report is not an audit.

Where Venezuela stands

With an oil boom that left no savings. Brent averaged about $90 between January and September, and the BCV's international reserves are still around March's $13 billion: what came in, according to KPMG, was sold.

With an exchange rate held up by an inflow signed in Washington that, according to the report, had less than four days of cushion on September 30. And with crude that fell from $113 at the end of October to $91 on November 10, which at the same volume leaves fewer dollars to sell. According to the government's portal, October was the year's highest-revenue month, at $3.028 billion, and the balance stood at $743 million on November 12.

For anyone making decisions about the country, that has two practical consequences. The official rate is a policy variable that depends on a signature and a price, not on reserves. And access to hard currency works as an asset handed out on criteria that are not published for each buyer: two companies in the same sector can import at different costs depending on whether they have an allocation.

What would settle it

From January 2027, the Democratic majority in both chambers will have more power to request what Washington holds. What Caracas holds depends on a central bank that does not publish the rate of each sale. Meanwhile, three things can be watched without asking anyone: the BCV's weekly reserves, which will show whether the bank starts spending its own when the inflow drops; the federal record of KPMG's contract, which will show whether the work is expanded or closed; and the government's portal, which will show whether its figures keep matching the account's.

"To the victor belong the spoils," Trump said in August. With what has been made public, there is no way to know who ended up with Venezuela's 2026 oil revenue: neither Trump's figure, nor KPMG's, nor Caracas's can be checked, even though the last two match. The data that would tell exist, the per-cargo prices and the list of buyers in Washington, the rate of each sale in Caracas, and neither government has published them.