Three of Britain’s top corruption prosecutors started working for Alejandro Betancourt, the Venezuelan billionaire who recently signed a major oil deal with Donald Trump, when Swiss authorities were seeking his extradition on suspicion of money-laundering. Sara Chouraqui, Elizabeth Collery and Victoria Jacobson all moved from the UK’s Serious Fraud Office to Betancourt’s North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP) in March. At the time, their counterparts in Zurich were still requesting Betancourt’s extradition from the UK, where he was bound by bail conditions.

Betancourt, 46, was barred in late 2025 by a London magistrates’ court from international travel, limiting him to shuttling between his Chelsea townhouse and Oxfordshire mansion. Since then, Betancourt’s fortunes have rapidly improved. NABEP signed what Trump dubbed the “deal of the century” with the US last month, winning contracts to administer 65bn barrels of Venezuelan oil. The Zurich Public Prosecutors’ Office dropped its extradition request in May.

Typically the UK National Crime Agency, not the SFO, acts as a gateway for extradition requests from overseas jurisdictions. The prosecutors’ move to NABEP has left the SFO without three of its top anti-bribery lawyers just as one of the beleaguered agency’s most significant cases is moving to a jury trial. Chouraqui, Collery and Jacobson led the prosecution of former traders at Glencore, the commodities trading house, who stand accused of corruption.