The toppling of President Nicolas Maduro has thrust Venezuela’s debt crisis — one of the world’s largest unresolved sovereign defaults — into the limelight.
Following years of economic crisis and U.S. sanctions that severed the country from international capital markets, Venezuela defaulted in late 2017 after missing payments on international bonds issued by the government and state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, known as PDVSA.
Since then, accumulated interest and legal claims tied to past expropriations have added to unpaid principal, swelling total external liabilities far beyond the face value of the original bonds.
Venezuela’s distressed debt has rallied since U.S. President Donald Trump came to power in January 2025 as speculators bet on the possibility of political change.
Below is a look at which entities owe money, what could be included in a restructuring and who might be knocking on Caracas’ door to collect.
Analysts estimate that Venezuela has about $60 billion of defaulted bonds outstanding. However, total external debt including PDVSA obligations, bilateral loans and arbitration awards stand at roughly $150 billion to $170 billion, depending on how accrued interest and court judgments are counted, according to analysts.
The International Monetary Fund estimates Venezuela’s nominal GDP at about $82.8 billion for 2025, implying a debt-to-GDP ratio of between 180%-200%.
A PDVSA bond originally maturing in 2020 was secured by a majority stake in U.S.-based refiner Citgo, which is ultimately owned by Caracas-headquartered PDVSA. Citgo is an asset now at the center of court-supervised efforts by creditors to recover value.
Years of sanctions, including a prohibition on trading Venezuela’s debt, have made it hard to keep tabs on ownership.
The largest share of commercial creditors likely consists of international bondholders, including specialist distressed-debt investors, sometimes called vulture funds.
Among the creditors is a group of companies awarded compensation through international arbitration after assets were expropriated by Caracas. U.S. courts have upheld multi-billion-dollar awards to ConocoPhillips and Crystallex among others, turning those claims into debt obligations and allowing creditors to pursue Venezuelan assets to make themselves whole.
A growing pool of court-recognized claimants is competing for recovery from Citgo’s parent company through U.S. legal proceedings. A Delaware court registered about $19 billion in claims for the auction of PDV Holding, Citgo’s parent, which far exceeds the estimated value of Citgo’s total assets. PDV Holding is PDVSA’s wholly-owned subsidiary.
Caracas also has bilateral creditors, primarily China and Russia, which extended loans to both Maduro and his mentor, former president Hugo Chavez.
Precise numbers are hard to verify since Venezuela has not published comprehensive debt statistics in years.
Given the plethora of claims, legal proceedings and political uncertainty, a formal restructuring is expected to be complex and lengthy.
A sovereign debt workout could be anchored by an IMF program setting fiscal targets and debt-sustainability assumptions. However, Venezuela has not had an IMF annual consultation in nearly two decades and remains locked out of the lender’s financing.
U.S. sanctions are another obstacle. Since 2017, restrictions imposed under both Republican and Democratic administrations have sharply limited Venezuela’s ability to issue or restructure debt without explicit licenses from the U.S. Treasury.
It is unclear what will happen with U.S. sanctions. For now, President Donald Trump has said the U.S. will
Venezuela’s billions in distressed debt: Who is in line to collect?
