President Donald Trump’s apparent green light for doing business in Venezuela is unlikely to prompt a rush of corporate investment, even if U.S. sanctions are rolled back, according to recent reporting by Dow Jones Risk Journal. 

Venezuela was “comprehensively sanctioned,” Daniel Tannebaum, a former U.S. Treasury sanctions specialist who now leads global anti-financial crime work at Oliver Wyman told Dow Jones. “Just because the sanctions are lifted doesn’t mean the risk is gone,” he said.

Large oil companies and the global banks that finance them have reasons beyond U.S. sanctions not to rush into Venezuela, including a history of nonpayment, expropriation, and money laundering, the news outlet said. Consequently, countries that have been broadly targeted by sanctions find that reintegration with the global economy is typically a slow-moving process. 

“Sanctions unwindings rarely happen all at once,” Kit Conklin, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and global head of risk and compliance at Exiger, told Dow Jones. 

Moving previously sanctioned Venezuelan crude could be relatively straightforward, but broader constraints may remain because “hundreds of other sanctions on companies and government entities” can complicate strategic investment decisions, Conklin said in the report. 

That caution is especially relevant because, “right now, nothing has changed from a regulatory perspective,” and businesses need to be careful, Michael Huneke, a partner at Morgan Lewis & Bockius, told the news outlet. 

Lindsay Newman, a geopolitical risk analyst and visiting research fellow at King’s College London, told Dow Jones that any relief is likely to follow a “go-slow” approach, while political and reputational risks would persist even if sanctions are eased.

Legacy disputes and counterparty risks also loom, according to the report. While Chevron continued operating in Venezuela as sanctions mounted, Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips have billions of dollars in outstanding claims after Venezuela nationalized their assets in 2007.

“It’s been [just] days since Maduro and his wife were flown out of Venezuela,” Tannebaum said in the report. “It’s not exactly a ‘mission accomplished’ moment.”

Read more at Dow Jones