Trump amps up pressure on billionaire Sargeant to exit Venezuela

Patricia Garip, Bloomberg News on Aug 8, 2026

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The Trump administration is dialing up pressure on Florida oil magnate and Republican Party donor Harry Sargeant III to divest from Venezuela.

The Treasury Department on Friday froze the assets of Sargeant’s offshore company that participates in Venezuelan oil-producing ventures, according to people with knowledge of the measure who declined to speak about it publicly. At the same time, the department issued a license that would allow him to unwind his interests in the company, the people said.

Sargeant served as a vital back channel between Washington and Caracas during years of deep hostility, accumulating outsized influence on both sides. The former U.S. Marine pilot later drew White House enmity as the Trump administration took control of resource-rich Venezuela under a new U.S.-backed president in Caracas.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control penalized Sargeant’s Bluewave Properties Ltd., citing violations of a 2018 executive order intended to block the property of people or entities deemed to have supported the former government in Caracas, according to the people. Bluewave had not been listed on Treasury’s sanctions list as of Saturday morning, but the company is operating on the premise that it is sanctioned, the people said.

The department can use a variety of measures to block financial transactions with entities that run afoul of US foreign policy. The people familiar with the actions taken by Treasury described them as sanctions.

British Virgin Islands-based Bluewave owns a minority stake in North American Blue Energy Partners, the second-largest private-sector oil producer in Venezuela after Chevron Corp. Some of the Venezuelan oil NABEP produces is turned into asphalt to pave U.S. streets.

Sargeant declined to comment. The Treasury Department didn’t reply to a request for comment.

U.S. policy in Venezuela is guided by a three-phase approach that includes stabilization, recovery and transition, a Trump administration official said, requesting anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The administration will continue to promote responsible and transparent investment in Venezuela for the benefit of the U.S. and Venezuelan people, the person said.

Sargeant moved seamlessly for years between President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach golf course and Venezuela’s presidential palace, where he regularly met with former President Nicolás Maduro — now in U.S. custody — and other top officials, including current Acting President Delcy Rodríguez.

The executive leveraged that rare access to convey messages back and forth between the two former adversaries, and helped free U.S. hostages held in Venezuela in 2025. At the same time, he cultivated deals in a country most oil companies avoided because of political risk and U.S. sanctions.

Following a Wall Street Journal story about Sargeant’s influence in Venezuela, Trump said on social media in February that he “has no authority, in any way, shape, or form, to act on behalf of the United States of America, nor does anyone else that is not approved by the State Department.”

(Daniel Flatley contributed to this report.)