For a decade, Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt has been ensnared in the tentacles of a sprawling Justice Department probe into a sophisticated billion-dollar money laundering scheme that US prosecutors allege embezzled funds from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company known as PDVSA.

Republican candidates fighting tight races in the midterm elections in November are staying away from next week’s party convention being thrown in Texas. A Daily Beast survey of battleground Republicans found that just two confirmed attendance for the Dallas event,