Houston's Venezuela Problem
U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro over the weekend. Some of the legal fallout will play out here.
Early Saturday morning, according to the White House, U.S. forces pulled Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from Caracas in what the administration called a large-scale strike. By afternoon, President Trump was at Mar-a-Lago announcing that American oil companies would rebuild Venezuela's petroleum industry. Chevron, headquartered in Houston, is the only major U.S. oil company still operating in Venezuela.
But the city's ties to Venezuela run deeper than corporate addresses. They run through Harris County courthouses, through subdivisions in Katy, through a company called Citgo that has operated for years in a kind of legal limbo. And now, with Maduro gone and the company changing hands, a series of unresolved questions are about to get louder.
This is the first in a series examining Houston's legal connections to the Venezuela crisis. The threads include two pending lawsuits filed by former Citgo executives who spent years in Venezuelan prisons. A multibillion-dollar company sale with more than a dozen creditors seeking a share of the proceeds. And a capital murder prosecution that the president cited as justification for military action, though the court record does not yet support everything he claimed.
The company
Citgo is headquartered in Houston’s Energy Corridor. It operates refineries in Lake Charles, Corpus Christi, and Lemont, Illinois. It supplies more than 4,000 gas stations east of the Rockies.
On paper, Citgo is owned by PDVSA, Venezuela's state oil company. In practice, that relationship has been frozen since 2019, when the U.S. imposed sanctions and recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's legitimate president. A new board took over. The company kept running. But PDVSA's debts did not disappear, and creditors came calling.
In November, a federal judge in Delaware approved the sale of Citgo's parent company to Amber Energy for $5.9 billion. Amber Energy is headquartered in Houston. It is backed by Elliott Investment Management, a hedge fund based in West Palm Beach. Venezuela's government rejected the sale and filed an appeal. That was before Maduro was captured. The sale is expected to close, but the legal picture remains unsettled.
The lawsuits
In November 2017, six Citgo executives flew to Caracas for a meeting at PDVSA headquarters. They were pulled from a conference room by masked security agents and detained. A Venezuelan judge later convicted them on charges related to a debt refinancing proposal that was never executed. They received sentences ranging from eight to thirteen years.
Five of the men were released in October 2022 as part of a prisoner swap. The sixth had been released earlier that year.
Two of them, brothers Alirio Jose Zambrano and Jose Luis Zambrano, live in Katy. In May 2024, they filed a lawsuit in Harris County district court seeking more than $400 million from Citgo. Their complaint alleges the company knew the men could be arrested when it ordered them to travel. It alleges Citgo executives provided confidential documents to Venezuelan military intelligence. It alleges the company abandoned the families and ignored pleas for help.
The lawsuit describes conditions in Venezuelan custody: forced nudity, physical abuse, starvation, deprivation of water and sunlight. Family members said the brothers were unrecognizable when they returned.
Citgo denies the allegations. The company says it supported the families financially and in other capacities. It says it should not be blamed for the acts of an authoritarian regime. The case is pending.
A similar lawsuit was filed in 2023 by Tomeu Vadell, another member of the group that became known as the Citgo 6. Citgo has asked a court to impose sanctions on Vadell’s family for what it calls meritless claims. That case is also pending in Harris County.
The line
Even if the Zambranos and Vadell prevail, collecting will be complicated. Citgo’s parent company owes creditors roughly $21 billion. ConocoPhillips alone is seeking more than $11 billion for assets Venezuela nationalized years ago. A Canadian mining company, Crystallex, won a judgment that helped trigger the sale process.
The former executives are at the back of a long line. Whether the Amber Energy sale leaves anything for them is unclear. A Harris County court will decide whether Citgo is liable. But even if the Zambranos win, where they stand among the creditors is a question for the Delaware proceedings overseeing the sale.
The prosecution
Trump, in his Saturday address, cited the 2024 murder of Jocelyn Nungaray, a twelve-year-old Houston girl. He said she was killed by members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, and called them animals sent by Maduro to terrorize Americans.
Two Venezuelan nationals are charged with capital murder in Harris County. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Search warrants filed in the case show investigators looking into possible gang ties based on social media posts and tattoos.
But the Harris County District Attorney’s Office has not confirmed the defendants are gang members. The indictment charges capital murder. The search warrants describe an investigation. That is not the same as a finding.
What comes next
The series will examine the Zambrano lawsuit and what the Harris County filings show. It will then turn to the Vadell case, including the sanctions motion Citgo filed against his family. From there, it will look at the company sale and where the former executives stand among the creditors. And it will ask what, if anything, changes now that Maduro is gone.
The cases raise questions that extend beyond one company: What does an American corporation owe its employees when it operates under a hostile foreign government? When sanctions sever a parent company from its subsidiary, who bears the liability for what came before? Houston courts may end up answering those questions.
The documents are in Houston. The plaintiffs are in Katy. The company is in the Energy Corridor. Whatever happens next in Venezuela, part of the story will be decided here.
Next: The Zambrano brothers say Citgo sent them into a trap. The company says it was a victim too. What the Harris County filings show.