Caracas Venezuela. Image by The arrest of a prominent Venezuelan oil broker in the United States may signal turbulent times ahead for Nicolás Maduro’s administration following Donald Trump’s re-election.
On November 2, Turkish businessman Taskin Torlak was arrested in Florida, on charges of conspiracy to transport sanctioned Venezuelan oil, the US Department of Justice reported.
Torlak, who owns several shipping companies, allegedly exported crude oil from Venezuela’s state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) between 2020 and 2023, earning over $32 million alongside his associates, according to case documents accessed by InSight Crime.
“This defendant allegedly conspired to illegally sell Venezuelan oil, using deceit and trickery to hide the fact that this oil originated from Venezuela,” said US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Matthew Graves, in a statement by the Department of Justice.
The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned PDVSA in January 2019, during Trump’s first term, as part of a series of stringent sanctions imposed by his administration on Venezuela. To preserve its primary revenue source, the Venezuelan regime has relied on third parties to commercialize and export oil.
Torlak and his partners frequently changed and concealed the names and flags of oil tankers and discussed tactics to avoid detection, such as disabling the vessels’ tracking systems, according to the investigation.
Part of the revenue from PDVSA deals was processed through US financial institutions, violating sanctions.
Although President Joe Biden’s administration has granted licenses to some major US oil companies to temporarily conduct business with PDVSA, the re-election of Trump—a fierce opponent of Maduro—could prompt new, tougher sanctions to penalize alleged electoral fraud in Venezuela.
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InSight Crime Analysis
Maduro faces an increasingly restricted landscape that may intensify his reliance on oil intermediaries and illicit economies, such as illegally-sourced gold, to sustain his government.
The scheme led by Torlak, for example, enabled PDVSA to ship crude oil to Asia, leaving intermediaries with the task of evading sanctions.
Court documents reveal that the Turkish businessman and his associates coordinated closely with the Venezuelan company to devise strategies for avoiding detection. One such measure included maintaining a “clean” fleet alongside the tankers transporting the Venezuelan oil.
“We really need those clean fleet under management as well (under a completely separate name). Two reasons, to of course make some money but more importantly to cover the fund transfers for V[enezuela],” Torlak said in one of the conversations cited in the investigation, according to the documents.
Outsourcing the official system opened the door to greater corruption within Venezuelan institutions. This allowed then-oil czar Tareck El Aissami and his network to acquire billions of dollars from PDVSA, according to the Venezuelan prosecutor’s office, which arrested El Aissami in April 2024 on corruption charges.
Another trusted intermediary for the regime is Colombian national and current Industry Minister Álex Saab. Before his arrest by the United States on money laundering charges, Saab marketed Venezuelan oil to various political allies abroad, profiting from widespread corruption, according to investigations by the news outlet Armando Info.
Like oil, gold extracted from southern Venezuela is also sanctioned by the United States. However, its sale abroad has also fallen under the control of intermediaries and criminal groups, which have employed various methods over the years to evade sanctions, including masking its origin in the legal exports of other countries.
With much of the international community closely monitoring Maduro’s moves following the alleged electoral fraud in July 2024, scrutiny of economic activities linked to the Venezuelan government may increase, complicating its financing through illicit and sanctioned economies.
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