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The United States government collected more than $12 billion from Venezuela's natural resource exports in the first nine months of 2026, according to a confidential report by the global financial services firm KPMG, reviewed by The New York Times and published on November 10. The report is the most detailed portrait yet of Washington's financial control over Venezuela since US forces toppled the country's president in January. It also leaves the most important question unanswered: where did the money actually end up?
The numbers in the report
The KPMG report, compiled on behalf of the US government, describes the activity of the "Venezuela Custody Account", set up by the US Treasury to manage the flow of Venezuelan export revenues. The account received $12.26 billion in deposits between January 3 — the date of the US military intervention — and the end of September, according to the report. The sale of crude oil accounted for the vast majority of the money. But by September 30, the report's cutoff date, the account held a balance of only about $170 million. The rest had been disbursed. According to the Times, $11.7 billion of the money sent back to Venezuela was used to prop up the country's national currency. A Venezuelan consultancy, Sintesis Financiera, estimates the Venezuelan government spent $12.3 billion on foreign currency auctions in the first nine months of 2026 — a figure that lines up closely with the KPMG total.
How the account works
The custody account was initially set up to operate from Qatar, before an outcry from Democrats and ethics experts led to an account being established at Citibank in New York. The KPMG report was written just days before the midterm elections, and the Times notes that it falls well short of a proper audit — it describes the flows, but it does not present the full picture of Venezuelan export revenues. The speed of the disbursements lends some credence to US officials' claims that Washington serves as mere custodian of the wealth Venezuela derives from its natural resources, primarily oil. But the report's most important sentence, as Gizmodo put it, is this: "It is unclear if the money stayed in the country or who the ultimate recipients were."
What we still don't know
The KPMG report does not identify the individuals and organisations that ultimately received the funds transferred back to Venezuela. The administration's claim is that the money flowing through the account was distributed back to Venezuela — but, as the Times' own reporting acknowledges, there is no basis on which to measure the accuracy of that claim. The report does not present the full picture of Venezuelan export revenues, and it was not written as an audit. Until a fuller accounting appears, the $12 billion figure is a receipt, not a destination.
The money is only part of a larger rearrangement. On November 9, the Times reported that Exxon had cut a preliminary deal to return to Venezuela, nearly two decades after it left, joining Chevron — which expanded its operations on September 2, a day after a deal giving the US majority control of more than 65 billion barrels was struck — in a line that did not exist ten weeks ago. On October 30, Chevron reported $10.4 billion and Exxon $17.5 billion in adjusted third-quarter profit; Chevron's quarter alone nearly matched the entire nine-month balance sitting in Washington's account. The custody account will keep filling as long as Venezuelan oil keeps flowing. The question the KPMG report cannot answer — who ultimately gets the money — is the one that will decide whether the arrangement is judged a custodianship or something else entirely. For the trade forces behind these flows, see our report on China's record $1 trillion trade surplus and the energy front in the drone attack on Iraq's Khor Mor gas field. And for why governments everywhere are suddenly telling citizens to prepare, see our explainer on the global stockpiling wave.
Sources: Deccan Herald (NYT), Gizmodo.