As of March 2026, there are at least US$4 Billion in assets linked to corruption in Venezuela have already been confiscated through 80 lawful court proceedings in the US. Yet the Venezuelan population—the true victims of this corruption—have not benefited from these recoveries.
The question facing policymakers today is no longer whether illicit assets should be confiscated; that process is already underway. The urgent question is whether the United States will ensure that those assets are ultimately used to repair the damage caused by decades of corruption and authoritarian rule.
At the Venezuelan Asset Recovery Initiative (Iniciativa Para La Recuperación de Activos Venezolanos, INRAV), we believe the answer lies in linking confiscation to restitution. The legislative proposal known as the Preserving Accountability for National Assets (PANA) Act, is a practical and legally sound pathway to achieve this goal and was recently reintroduced with bipartisan support in the 119th Congress as H.R. 9039.
The proposal has already demonstrated that support for the Venezuelan people transcends political parties. In September 2025, after joint advocacy efforts by INRAV and the Washington Office for Latin America (WOLA), the PANA Act was approved unanimously within the House Foreign Affairs Committee as an amendment to the State Department Reauthorization Act, reflecting strong bipartisan consensus on this bill. That vote signaled something important: the cause of accountability, justice, and democratic recovery in Venezuela is not a partisan issue. It is a matter of principle.
Upon reintroduction, Congress should vote yes for the PANA Act, and support Venezuelans as they navigate a turning point in their history.
The justice gap in asset recovery
Over the past decade, corruption investigations around the world have exposed massive illicit financial flows linked to Venezuelan officials and their networks. In the United States alone, 61 of the 80 cases for money laundering and corruption have resulted in final confiscation orders for assets derived from illicit activity.
To calculate the estimated USD $4 Billion in confiscation orders as of March 2026, INRAV used publicly available court documents to create a Venezuela Loot Tracker. Although unlikely to be the final available amount, since there are administrative costs implied and there is depreciation in assets, the total of cases and the available amount is bound to continue growing as more cases are prosecuted.
These confiscations represent an important achievement for the rule of law. But they also reveal a structural problem: confiscation rarely leads to restitution.
Under existing U.S. law, there are three primary mechanisms for returning confiscated assets. One is international asset sharing, which allows the United States to transfer forfeited funds to a foreign government that cooperated in the investigation. Another is remission, an administrative process designed to compensate identifiable victims. The third is court-ordered restitution, which applies when victims can demonstrate a direct and proximate loss.
Venezuela’s corruption crisis does not fit neatly into these legal categories. Venezuela’s institutions were gradually dismantled under Hugo Chavez, worsened with Nicolás Maduro and that situation remains intact with Delcy Rodriguez.
Gross human rights violations have been committed in Venezuela and documented as such by the UN Fact Finding Mission. This body has pointed towards the need of investigating the relationship between these crimes and gran corruption. The impact of gran corruption has rendered the entire population as victims and helps explain the collapse of public services in the country.
The challenge of restitution in captured states
Venezuela today faces a political and institutional reality that complicates traditional asset return. State institutions remain deeply compromised by corruption and authoritarian control. Returning confiscated assets directly to government authorities under these circumstances would risk placing those resources back into the same networks that stole them in the first place.
As a result, confiscated assets often remain indefinitely in U.S. forfeiture funds while authorities wait for a future political transition that might allow their safe return.
This approach may be legally cautious, but it has serious consequences. It delays justice for victims, exposes assets to political or legal uncertainties, and ignores the urgent humanitarian and democratic needs of Venezuelan society.
Most importantly, it assumes that restitution must wait for a perfect political moment. In reality, to rebuild democratic institutions in Venezuela will take years. Waiting until that process is complete risks losing the opportunity to use these assets for their intended purpose.
International and U.S. standards on asset recovery recognize this challenge. The U.S. is a party to the United Nations Against Corruption (UNCAC) and co-hosted the Global Forum on Asset Recovery (GFAR) in 2017. The Principles for Disposition and Transfer of Confiscated Stolen Assets, emphasize that recovered assets should benefit the populations harmed by corruption and should be managed with transparency, accountability, and participation from civil society. The GFAR principles also stress that restitution mechanisms must be designed to avoid re-victimization and ensure that returned assets are not captured again by corrupt actors.
Most importantly, these principles recognize that asset recovery is not complete until confiscated resources are used for the benefit of victims.
Solution: The PANA Act
The PANA Act addresses this problem directly. Previous bills had included similar proposals which demonstrates that the idea of creating a fund of this nature has enjoyed bipartisan support. In fact, the first time a bill included language regarding efforts to recover assets stolen from the Venezuelan people was in the VERDAD Act of 2019.
The legislation proposes the creation of a Venezuela Restoration Fund, a dedicated mechanism that would allow confiscated assets linked to Venezuelan corruption to be preserved and used transparently for the benefit of the Venezuelan people. The design of the fund is legally grounded:
First, the fund does not interfere with the confiscation process. Assets would only enter the fund after a U.S. court issues a final confiscation order, meaning that full due process has been respected and the illicit origin of the assets has been legally established.
Second, the fund would operate within existing U.S. oversight mechanisms. Assets would remain under the custody of the U.S. Treasury and be administered by the State Department, ensuring compliance with U.S. law, congressional oversight, and foreign policy considerations.
Finally, the bill ensures that the assets cannot be captured by creditors pursuing claims against Venezuela and would prioritize victim-centered use of recovered assets, supporting initiatives such as independent media, civil society organizations, anti-corruption efforts, and programs aimed at strengthening democratic institutions. Although INRAV and WOLA would like to see further wording assuring that the Fund would be ring-fenced to impede that the assets would be diverted for unrelated purposes, it is a good starting point and can be adjusted during its reauthorization.
The most relevant outcome from the design of the Fund is that these priorities reflect an essential principle of international anti-corruption law: asset recovery is not complete until confiscated resources benefit the victims of corruption.
Asset recovery as a human rights issue
In Venezuela, the stakes could not be higher.
Systemic corruption has contributed to the collapse of public services, the erosion of democratic institutions, and one of the largest displacement crises in the world not caused by armed conflict. Nearly eight million Venezuelans have been forced to leave their country.
At the same time, independent journalists, human rights defenders, and civil society organizations continue to operate under repression and severe resource constraints. The decision to terminate most foreign assistance and to dismantle USAID deeply impacted Venezuelan civil society. Although asset recovery is entirely different from foreign aid, these assets could be put to similar uses, without passing the burden on U.S. taxpayers.
Against this backdrop, asset recovery cannot be treated as a purely technical issue. Every dollar confiscated abroad represents resources that were diverted from hospitals, schools, infrastructure, and social programs.
Ensuring that these assets benefit the Venezuelan population is therefore not an act of charity. It is a matter of justice.
A bipartisan opportunity
The bipartisan approval of the PANA Act demonstrated that U.S. lawmakers recognize both the moral and strategic importance of this issue.
Support for the Venezuelan people has historically been an area of consistent bipartisan agreement in U.S. foreign policy. Previous attempts for similar legislation with the VERDAD Act and the unanimous committee vote demonstrate and reaffirmed that tradition.
As Congress considers the next steps for this legislation, it faces a rare opportunity to transform asset recovery from a purely punitive process into a mechanism for restorative justice.
By linking confiscation to a transparent restitution pathway, the United States can set an international precedent for how stolen assets should be returned in contexts where traditional state-to-state restitution is not possible.
Such leadership would not only benefit Venezuelans. It would strengthen global anti-corruption efforts and reinforce the principle that stolen public resources belong to the people from whom they were taken.
The next step
For too long, the global asset recovery system has treated confiscation as the final step in the process. The Venezuelan case shows that confiscation is only the beginning.
The real challenge is ensuring that recovered assets ultimately serve the public interest.
The PANA Act offers a practical way to meet that challenge. By establishing a transparent and accountable mechanism for the use of confiscated Venezuelan assets, it ensures that justice does not end in a legal holding account.
Instead, it creates a pathway for restitution, one that recognizes the Venezuelan people as the rightful beneficiaries of the resources that corruption has taken from them.
About the author:
María Alejandra Márquez is the founder of INRAV, a U.S.-based, citizen-led NGO that advocates since 2020 to recover the assets forfeited to corrupt Venezuelan individuals in the U.S. and to return them for the benefit of the Venezuelan population. She is also the Executive President of El Tiempo, a 67-year-old, family-owned regional media outlet in Eastern Venezuela. Márquez has a bachelor’s in journalism from Universidad Católica Andres Bello (UCAB) in Caracas, and a master’s degree in communication policy studies from City University of London.
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