Alejandro Betancourt ‘disappeared’ from his castle in Spain the day police went to arrest him

Police had been monitoring the movements of Alejandro Betancourt since late August 2025. He was being secretly investigated in both Spain and Switzerland, and on the morning of August 28, Spain’s Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) had located him at his Alamín estate in Toledo, a property of roughly 1,440 hectares valued at more than €25 million ($29 million), after learning that he had arrived at Madrid’s Barajas Airport with his family.

Six officers went to Santa Cruz de Retamar, where the castle is located, but by the time they had crossed the extensive grounds and gained access to the property, Betancourt had “disappeared,” according to sources familiar with the investigation. Only Betancourt’s mother and wife were at the residence, and both refused to call the businessman.

The previously undisclosed details of this operation have taken on renewed significance now that Betancourt, long identified as one of the young businessmen who amassed fortunes under Venezuela’s Chavista governments (from the ruling movement founded by former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez), has become the Trump administration’s trusted partner in efforts to explore and market Venezuelan oil following the fall of Nicolás Maduro. His company, North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), now the country’s second-largest private oil producer, is the main vehicle for the agreement between Washington and Caracas to develop 17 oil fields holding an estimated 65 billion barrels of reserves. Betancourt has gone from being a businessman under investigation by authorities in several countries to becoming a key figure in the new U.S. energy strategy toward Venezuela.

Documents obtained by EL PAÍS reveal that Operation Bolívar, the name given to the operation that culminated in searches of two Betancourt properties, ended without the businessman’s arrest. Betancourt is implicated in an investigation into alleged money laundering and tax evasion linked to the suspected embezzlement of billions of dollars from Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, a scheme that allegedly began in 2012. The search warrants, which also covered properties belonging to former Chavista deputy energy minister Nervis Villalobos and Pedro Trebbau López, Betancourt’s cousin, were issued at the request of Swiss authorities and executed by Spain’s High Court, the Audiencia Nacional.

At 11 a.m. on August 28, officers launched an operation around the castle, a vast estate about 37 miles southwest of Madrid featuring a tennis court, hunting grounds, and a large mansion that once belonged to Gerardo Díaz Ferrán, the former president of Spain’s Confederation of Business Organizations (CEOE). The castle, purchased through his company Compañía de Inversiones Agrícolas Trieste S.L., has belonged to Betancourt since 2012 and has become a venue for meetings attended by prominent business leaders and politicians.

Among those meetings was one held in 2019 with former New York City mayor and then personal lawyer to Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, who months later would intercede on his behalf with the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as with Wilmer Guaidó, the father of opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who declared himself the acting president of Venezuela in 2019. According to reports that later emerged, Betancourt allegedly secretly financed Guaidó.

That support created a rift in his relationship with Chavismo. That same year, Jorge Rodríguez, then Venezuela’s communications minister and now president of the National Assembly, publicly denounced a corruption scheme that he said underpinned those ties between Guaidó and Betancourt. Six years later, his sister, acting president Delcy Rodríguez, is defending Betancourt as a strategic oil ally. “Often a person is judged in the media before being judged in court,” she said.

At noon, UDEF officers drove down the dirt road leading to the estate, “securing it with uniformed police personnel to control the entry and exit of any vehicle,” and around 12:25 p.m. they entered the interior of the property.

Police documents acknowledge that, because of the estate’s “size and extent,” officers had to move quickly once on site. But as they made their way across the grounds, workers and family members had already begun to notice the police presence. When officers entered the residence, they found the Venezuelan businessman’s mother and wife, who, when asked about his whereabouts, “provided contradictory accounts.” They first said that he “had gone out for a walk” and later claimed that he “had left for Madrid shortly before” the officers arrived. The fact was that he never returned, and UDEF was unable to locate him. Officers unsuccessfully asked the women to call him, but both refused and requested permission to contact their lawyer instead.

That same day, police from Zurich had traveled to Madrid, and the operation also included officers from Europol and from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), who work out of the U.S. Embassy in Spain, according to the sources cited. Santiago Pedraz, the High Court judge overseeing the case in Spain, authorized the participation of countries interested in assisting with the investigation.

There were mistakes, the investigative sources acknowledge, because Betancourt was not arrested that day. By the time officers entered the residence, he was no longer there. Judge Pedraz subsequently issued a national and international arrest warrant and, once Betancourt was located, requested his extradition to Spain. Investigators later determined that he had left Spain via Lisbon, according to sources familiar with the case.

Weeks later, in October, Betancourt was arrested in London for the first time and testified by videoconference. On October 27, 2025, the judge lifted both the extradition request and the arrest warrant. Days later, however, Betancourt was arrested again at the request of the Zurich prosecutor’s office, which secured his detention by British police at Charing Cross station in central London. Betancourt posted bail of £2 million ($2.7 million) and was released.

Following those arrests, the businessman has enjoyed the backing of Washington, which, despite his controversial reputation, has defended him as a partner in the oil agreement. Senior officials in the Trump administration directly pressured Swiss prosecutors, according to The Washington Post, to persuade Zurich authorities to withdraw Betancourt’s extradition request to the United Kingdom in May, although the criminal case against him remains open.

In Spain, what has worked in his favor so far is silence: the High Court’s investigation depends on Washington authorizing the testimony of five witnesses, all of whom have already been convicted in the United States in connection with corruption at PDVSA. The request for judicial assistance was sent nearly a year ago and remains unanswered. Judge Pedraz has warned that, if the United States does not respond before December, the case will be shelved once again.

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