A single phone call in March turned a wealthy Venezuelan oilman wanted abroad into the Trump administration's newest business partner, according to new reporting.
According to a Friday Washington Post article, President Donald Trump's former special envoy for Latin America, Mauricio Claver-Carone, reached out to Alejandro Betancourt, a Venezuelan oil magnate running his operations from Britain.
The Trump administration wanted a piece of his company, North American Blue Energy Partners, according to The Post. In exchange, Betancourt would have to surrender some ownership and let the Trump administration seat its own people on his board.
According to two people briefed on the conversation who spoke to The Post, Betancourt told Claver-Carone, "I'm all in" without hesitation.
The arrangement has drawn scrutiny because Betancourt has been under investigation for years in multiple countries for money laundering, The Post reported. Former Trump official Elliott Abrams called out the Trump administration for working with Betancourt in a Post op-ed earlier this week.
"Trump has allied the government with the most shadowy and repellent Venezuelan businessman he could find," Abrams wrote. "We knew exactly what Betancourt stood for and kept him far away from the U.S. government. No longer."
Betancourt was arrested twice in Britain in 2025 after Spain and Switzerland issued a warrant for his arrest related to money laundering cases, The Post reported. In May, the Swiss withdrew their extradition request to Britain, and then asked Washington to detain him, anonymous sources told The Post.
Instead, a senior State Department official in the Trump administration requested that the U.S. Consulate in London issue Betancourt a one-year, multiple-entry visa, which it did in June, according to The Post. He has traveled repeatedly to Washington since then, according to The Post.
"We just wanted to have access to him so we could finalize this arrangement," a senior U.S. official told The Post.
Another senior official told reporters on Tuesday that Betancourt is "a proven operator," but added, "I'm not nominating anyone for sainthood here. What I am telling you is that this is a person that, in the past, has been helpful to the United States government."