Have any US senators been named in official DOJ or Treasury reports regarding Venezuelan illicit finance?
This fact-check may be outdated. Consider refreshing it to get the most current information.
Executive summary
No U.S. senator appears among the persons formally identified or sanctioned in the Department of the Treasury’s public Venezuela-related actions, and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reporting on illicit Venezuelan financial flows documents designations of hundreds of foreign individuals and entities rather than naming U.S. lawmakers; recent social-media claims that a Venezuelan intelligence figure released a list implicating U.S. senators have been found by fact-checkers to have no supporting evidence in the public record [1] [2] [3].
1. What the official documents actually name
Treasury’s public actions around Venezuela—most recently OFAC press releases and its Venezuela sanctions program materials—identify Maduro allies, family members, Venezuelan businesses, shipping firms and vessels, and scores of foreign individuals and entities as targets of designations and restrictions, but those public notices do not list any sitting U.S. senators as designated parties [1] [4].
2. What GAO and U.S. agency reporting says about targets and scope
The GAO’s review of illicit financial flows connected to Venezuela describes how U.S. agencies have designated more than 300 foreign individuals and entities and how Treasury, FinCEN, DOJ and DHS have used collected information to pursue investigations; that body of reporting repeatedly characterizes the targets as foreign Venezuelan elites, companies and facilitators rather than domestic U.S. lawmakers [2] [5].
3. Public allegations and the fact-checking response
In December 2025, widely shared social-media claims alleged that Hugo Carvajal, the former Venezuelan intelligence chief, had produced a list naming U.S. politicians who took kickbacks; independent fact-checking by Snopes found no evidence that Carvajal released such a list implicating U.S. senators and was unable to corroborate the social-media posts’ underlying documentation [3].
4. Distinguishing accusations, requests for probes, and formal government naming
There is a long history of U.S. senators publicly calling for DOJ probes into Venezuelan drug-trafficking and corruption—news coverage from 2018, for example, records senators urging DOJ action—but those stories describe senators as investigators or critics, not as targets named in DOJ or Treasury investigative reports or sanctions listings [6]. Official Treasury and DOJ naming or sanctioning carries concrete public products (OFAC lists, sanction press releases, GAO/agency reports); those official products in the reviewed sources list foreign actors tied to Maduro and criminal networks, not U.S. lawmakers [1] [2] [4].
5. Alternative narratives and possible motivations behind claims
The viral claim stemming from Carvajal-related material fits a pattern in which leaked or alleged lists get amplified on partisan channels and by outlets with ideological aims; Snopes’ account highlights that the purported list surfaced in social posts and a conservative outlet’s reporting without independent documentation, suggesting the potential for political motives in circulation even where no verifiable official naming exists [3].
6. Limits of this review and what would constitute official naming
The reporting provided includes OFAC press releases, GAO reviews, Treasury program pages and fact-checking on a high-profile allegation; none of those documents show DOJ or Treasury formally naming any U.S. senator in connection with Venezuelan illicit finance, but this assessment is limited to the supplied sources and their public materials—comprehensive confirmation would require checking full DOJ indictment archives, OFAC/FinCEN designation databases and classified investigative materials not included here [1] [2] [5] [4] [3].
7. Bottom line
Based on the official Treasury releases, GAO reporting and public fact-checking available in the provided reporting, no U.S. senator has been named in official DOJ or Treasury reports as implicated in Venezuelan illicit finance; unverified claims to the contrary have been debunked or lack corroboration in the public record examined [1] [2] [5] [3].