Venezuela’s oil fund has Secretary of State Marco Rubio and a Qatari bank account.

Nearly two weeks after President Donald Trump kidnapped Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, his administration has already collected at least $500 million from oil sales, holding the money in a Qatari bank with the White House giving the secretary of state sweeping discretion over how it’s spent. There’s no independent auditor to track the money, no public accounting of how it will reach ordinary Venezuelans — and no timeline for when Venezuela might eventually regain control of its oil resources.

In the longer term, it is unclear whether proceeds can be used to pay off an estimated $140 billion in Venezuelan debt.

“What does ‘for the benefit of the Venezuelan people’ mean if we’re controlling the money? Is it just like U.S. government officials will sign off on, ‘This money can go to this person in Venezuela, or this business or this investment’?” said Edward Fishman, who worked on Iran oil sanctions at both State and Treasury during the Obama administration, now director of the Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “There’s all kinds of risk of corruption and misuse of these funds.”

The White House did not respond to questions about how the fund will be overseen, how Qatar was chosen to hold the funds or how the administration will ensure the oil revenues are used to benefit the Venezuelan people. Instead, an administration official focused on what the fund will do to help energy prices.

“We now have leverage — oil is on the market again, most of which will be sold to the United States, so this is another measure that will drive down domestic energy prices. We now have the leverage to stop narcoterrorism and the trafficking of deadly drugs,” said one administration official, granted anonymity to discuss strategy. “The president and his team are carefully crafting each deal to stabilize Venezuela and re-route oil profits back to the Venezuelan people to help their country recover from decades of mismanagement.”

The Treasury Department declined to comment, while the State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

The lack of clarity around the current arrangement underscores the risks Trump has taken in seizing control of Venezuela’s oil industry at a moment when his administration is trying to focus its midterm messaging on the economy. Any hint of waste, corruption or mismanagement of the Venezuelan oil could undercut that pitch — hurting Venezuelans, damaging Republicans’ electoral hopes and tarnishing Trump’s legacy.

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