Erebor Bank, a startup backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, has pitched senior Venezuelan officials on restoring the sanctioned country’s access to the U.S. financial system, Bloomberg reported Friday. 

Erebor, which obtained its U.S. banking charter only three months ago, has offered to arrange correspondent lines with Venezuelan banks and set up sub-accounts for their clients. Such arrangements would make it easier for local firms to open U.S. accounts and ease the flow of money from Venezuela, which remains under some U.S. sanctions, Bloomberg said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Erebor co-founder Jacob Hirshman has traveled to Caracas multiple times over the past two months, pitching the firm’s services to Luis Perez, Venezuela’s interim central bank chief, as well as to the country’s private financial firms, the news outlet said. Hirshman was listed as a visitor to Venezuela in March on a trip with U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. No other U.S. bank executives were named among the attendees, who included officials from Shell Plc, Halliburton Co. and SLB Ltd, Bloomberg said.

In a statement to Bloomberg, an Erebor spokesman confirmed the firm had held “preliminary conversations about correspondent banking and related financial services” in the country. “In emerging markets such as Venezuela, Erebor’s role would be limited, carefully defined, and rooted in restoring compliant financial connectivity,” the spokesman said.

At one of the meetings, Hirshman told Venezuelan executives that his bank has support from the U.S. government, according to an unnamed Bloomberg source. Some Venezuelan executives left meetings with the impression that Erebor would clear compliance for their firms faster than larger U.S. banks such as JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup.

Erebor, which takes its name from the mountain where dwarves stored their treasure in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” became the first newly created bank to receive a national charter under the second Trump administration when the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency approved it in early February, The Wall Street Journal reported at the time. The Columbus, Ohio-based digital bank launched with $635 million in capital and has pitched itself as filling the void left by the 2023 collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

Founded by Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey with funding from Thiel’s Founders Fund, Lux Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, 8VC and others, Erebor reached a $4.35 billion valuation in December, Bloomberg reported. The bank, which has heavily targeted U.S. cryptocurrency and defense-sector clients, crossed $1.1 billion in deposits within seven weeks of opening on February 8, American Banker reported earlier this month.