Rubio, Bessent and Oliver Blanco: four messages on Venezuela that do not match

On November 2, on his first visit to Washington as foreign minister, Oliver Blanco met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Each side published its account the same day. The accounts do not contradict each other, but they do not describe the same meeting either.

Blanco, a former member of Democratic Action (AD), had been running that channel since March as deputy minister for Europe and North America. The trip did not open it: it showed what each side sends through it.

Four messages, two agendas

According to the State Department, Rubio reaffirmed the White House’s three-phase plan —stabilization, economic recovery and political reconciliation, and democratic transition— reviewed the reforms that lay the groundwork for “free, fair, and credible elections,” and urged the continued release of the remaining political prisoners. Blanco summed up the meeting with a different list: “bilateral relations, regional challenges, energy cooperation and security.” He does not mention prisoners or elections; Washington does not mention energy.

With Bessent, the split was reversed. According to Treasury, the secretary spoke of the same plan, of boosting energy production and of “reconnecting the Venezuelan financial sector.” Blanco wrote that they discussed “access to multilateral financial institutions.”

Treasury does not name them.

Blanco spoke of “many points of agreement” between the two governments. There is agreement on one point, economic recovery, and even there each side fills it differently: Treasury with oil and banking, Caracas with multilateral credit.

A third file appears in none of the four messages. On November 3 it was reported, citing unnamed U.S. officials, that the State Department is negotiating a status of forces agreement with Venezuela, the legal groundwork for a potential long-term U.S. military presence. The department neither confirmed nor denied it: it noted that it has such agreements with more than 100 countries.

Transition or transformation

Washington writes “democratic transition,” the third phase of its plan. Caracas writes a different word. Its chargé d’affaires in Washington presented the same meeting as part of talks to consolidate “democratic transformation,” and Blanco, on being appointed on October 29, said he was “proud to accompany the Acting President in this process of democratic transformation.” A transition is defined by where it ends. This transformation is defined by who leads it.

Neither word comes with a date. On October 29, Delcy Rodríguez promised every election the Constitution provides for, without a calendar.

The money Caracas is asking for

Behind the request is a figure that keeps changing size. On October 8, Delcy Rodríguez estimated $12 billion in public and private financing over two years, after resuming relations with the IMF, the World Bank and the IDB. On November 3 it was $17 billion over five years, also public and private, in negotiations “being closed” in “a country in Europe” she did not name. Neither statement says whether it is the same pool. If it is, the amount rose 42% and the annual pace fell from $6 billion to about $3.4 billion.

That same day she said “we are sitting with the multilaterals” and asked for her economic plan within four weeks, “because with that plan we sit down with the multilateral.” The two sentences fit together only if the table already exists and the plan meant to support it does not.

On the lenders’ side, the only public figure is the World Bank’s: up to $5 billion over two years, with a condition. “We are waiting for the arrears to be cleared in order to continue,” its vice president for the region said on October 16. With the IDB alone, Venezuela has more than $2 billion overdue.

The United States weighs on the other side: it holds 16.49% of the IMF’s votes, the most of any member, and Treasury manages that stake. It cannot veto a program on its own, since programs pass with half the votes, but one without its support starts with a sixth of the votes against it.

As long as Treasury does not write “multilaterals,” Caracas’s request carries little weight.

Who controls the money

The recovery Treasury describes starts with oil, and what the Venezuelan state collects from that oil already runs through a channel Washington set. Royalties, per-barrel levies and taxes owed to the government or to PDVSA go into an account held in custody by Treasury, according to OFAC. They leave it only if Caracas commits to the State Department to use them for approved purposes, according to an April Treasury letter.

The multilateral credit the foreign minister asked for would come in another way. None of the November 2 messages says which account it would go through or who would audit it.

What will test it

Three tests will show whether the channel produces anything beyond statements: the fourth round of the national dialogue, November 11 to 15, with the releases and reforms Rubio asked for; the economic plan Delcy Rodríguez asked to have within four weeks, around December 1, which will have to say where the money comes from; and the first time Treasury names the multilaterals in a document.

Until then, anyone buying Venezuelan debt or assets on the expectation of multilateral credit from this trip is paying for credit that, so far, only the side asking for it mentions.