Maduro’s Secret “Sellout”: Offered US Control of Oil to Save Regime, Reports Say

In a desperate, secret bid to save his regime from a U.S. pressure campaign, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro spent months offering the White House a “total sellout” deal: complete U.S. corporate control over Venezuela’s vast oil, gold, and mineral wealth in exchange for his own political survival, according to senior officials familiar with the negotiations.
The explosive reports, which were confirmed by President Trump himself in a statement on Friday, paint a picture of a leader willing to auction off his country’s sovereignty to the highest bidder. Maduro’s secret proposal, a complete betrayal of the “Chávez-era resource nationalism” that defined his predecessor’s anti-American revolution, included several staggering concessions. He reportedly offered to kick his primary international backers—China, Russia, and Iran—out of Venezuela’s lucrative energy sector.
Furthermore, he proposed to reverse the country’s oil flows, redirecting them from Beijing and other rival nations back to American refineries, and to hand over major contracts for gold and mineral extraction directly to U.S. firms. The offer was, in effect, a complete surrender of the “Bolivarian” economic model, which was built on seizing foreign assets and expelling American influence.
However, the secret talks, which had been ongoing for months, collapsed for one simple reason: the U.S. President was not interested in a business deal. The administration’s price was not economic, but political.
According to the officials, the White House’s non-negotiable demand was Maduro’s own exit from power. The U.S. position, which has hardened since the 2024 election and the rise of Nobel Peace Prize-winning opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, is focused on regime change, not a new partnership with a leader it has charged with narco-terrorism.
The talks reportedly fell apart when it became clear that Maduro was willing to offer anything—his allies, his oil, his gold—except his own position as president. His refusal to negotiate his own departure led directly to the collapse of the back-channel diplomacy.
This failure provides the direct context for the extreme escalation now underway in the Caribbean. Having failed to secure his regime’s safety through a secret economic bargain, Maduro is now facing the full force of Washington’s “Plan B.” This includes the overt military pressure of B-52 bombers off his coast, a complete severing of diplomatic ties, and a newly revealed secret CIA finding authorizing lethal covert operations to dismantle his government and its allied cartels.