derwick associates

There was an oil summit in Caracas this week. A small crowd gathered to see what can be snatched and grabbed in the fire sale of Venezuela's sovereign resources. Power went out, twice, during the event. The biggest oil baron in Venezuelan history, that is the man the State Dept.

News of Alejandro Betancourt's stake in Gazprombank Latin America Ventures have left the confines of this website. It was March 2016 when we first published about it. It took Donald Trump's announcement of a Pentagon / U.S. State Department partnership with Betancourt for "experts" to wake up to that Russia connection.

Very relevant recent article by the Financial Times "Top UK graft prosecutors joined Trump’s Venezuela oil baron during Swiss probe" on the speed at which the revolving door of completely compromised prosecutors from the UK's Serious Fraud Office (Sara Chouraqui, Elizabeth Collery and Victoria Jacobson) went to bat for completely corrupt Alejandro Betancourt. It'd be interesting to see how current salary packages compare with previous.

The Spanish media reported days ago that Judge Santiago Pedraz has requested access to associates of Alejandro Betancourt that have already pleaded guilty in the U.S. (Operation Money Flight), as part of criminal probes into multibillion dollar money laundering schemes led by the Department of Justice (DOJ). Pedraz needs these key witnesses, allegedly, to be able to demonstrate the illicit origin of the money laundered by Betancourt in Spain, Switzerland and elsewhere.

Leaving this here for future reference. Alejandro Betancourt, the "innocent" man the Trump administration claims wasn't being investigated, escaped a Spanish police arrest attempt because that's what the innocent do when police shows up. The operation to arrest Betancourt included "officers from Europol and from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE)". That would be U.S.

President Donald Trump is a very busy man. He doesn't have much time to be entertaining anything or anyone for long. The recent announcement of his administration getting into some kind of a partnership with Alejandro Betancourt does bring one relevant question: who made the intro and got the fee? The Washington Post has advanced the hypothetical option of Mauricio Claver-Carone, as the behind-scenes architect of the deal.

Jeffrey Epstein too was controversial, remember? For many years, the sweet deal that Epstein cut with Alex Acosta was referred to as controversial. Acosta would become Trump's labor secretary. But there was no controversy, was there? For well over a decade, Epstein laughed at law enforcement while cultivating and exploiting relations at the highest levels in the U.S. and elsewhere. Epstein's friends were all in awe of his worldliness and sophistication, of his suave demeanor, of his erudition.

UPDATED [SEE BELOW] - Axios, largely perceived as the quasi-official propaganda organ of Marco Rubio and Donald Trump, gave some clues this morning about reasons behind the U.S. government's decision to pick Alejandro Betancourt as partner. Most of the stuff Infodio readers have known for years have been confirmed by Axios, but some claims merit further scrutiny.

The White House put out a Fact Sheet about the "biggest oil deal in world history" that Donald Trump did with Alejandro Betancourt. We would encourage readers to save a copy of the original version published for future reference. Said Fact Sheet raises a number of questions:

This is a guest post from Alek Boyd - It is the end of 2025. Imagine being a billionaire controlling your own banks, allegedly a legitimate businessman with operations spanning the globe, and getting arrested twice in London, on competing international arrest warrants issued by Spain and Switzerland. You read it correctly: Switzerland. Imagine having to surrender passports and suffer the indignity of having to fight an extradition request from Switzerland, linked to a multi billion dollar money laundering case.