On the evening of Friday, February 14, 2025, while many couples were getting ready to celebrate Valentine’s Day, Javier Milei posted a message on X that would trigger a possible transnational fraud scheme and the biggest scandal to hit his administration. The Argentine president’s promotion of the $Libra crypto‑asset prompted a large number of people to invest in the currency, which shot up in a violent spike and then collapsed, leaving a trail of victims and a handful of major winners with access to privileged information. One year after that episode, the various lines of investigation have produced no definitive conclusions, and Milei has yet to offer an explanation.
“Liberal Argentina is growing!!!” began the now-famous message, which introduced what was presented as a private project supposedly aimed at “boosting the growth of the Argentine economy by funding small businesses and Argentine ventures.” It included a link to a website — vivalalibertadproject.com — and the code for a contract that allowed interested users to “find” this unknown token in their digital wallets.
The currency had been created just half an hour before Milei’s post, and the funds for its initial operation were transferred in the five minutes prior by its developers — the same people who, only hours later, sold off their holdings after the token had skyrocketed and walked away with profits estimated between $80 and $100 million. Part of this operation was confirmed by U.S. citizen Hayden Davis, CEO of the company that created $Libra. According to a recent report by the Argentine newspaper Clarín, Milei had signed a confidential contract with Davis 15 days earlier naming him as his crypto adviser.
Davis is a key figure in this story. The man — who appears in a selfie next to the president wearing gold‑rimmed glasses — boasted within his circle that he could get Milei to do anything he asked: post on social media, hold meetings, promote projects. “I control that nigga,” he wrote in a chat that circulated in national media. “I send $$ to his sister [Karina] and he signs what I say and does what I want. Crazy.”
Milei deleted the message about $Libra five hours after promoting the cryptocurrency, just past midnight on Valentine’s Day. After facing a torrent of criticism, he said he “was not familiar with the details of the project,” a statement that finished off $Libra’s market value. According to a report by the Argentine Congress, a total of 114,410 digital wallets suffered losses from the scheme (498 lost more than $100,000 and 3,144 lost between $10,000 and $100,000), while 36 digital wallets each earned more than $1 million.
So far, Milei has offered few and vague explanations, but his main strategy has been to claim that he merely shared, as a private citizen, an initiative he found interesting, without being part of the project himself. However, there are details that signal the opposite is true. For instance, the alphanumeric code he included in his message was not available online at the time he posted it. Someone must have provided it to him beforehand.
Ongoing investigations
In Argentina, a criminal case has been opened over the incident, though it is moving slowly. “The case is still under investigation; we are carrying out evidentiary measures,” explained the prosecutor in charge, Eduardo Taiano. The courts have not yet summoned witnesses or defendants, and the prosecutor faced a request to be removed from the case for alleged lack of objectivity — a request that was dismissed by federal judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi.
In addition to Milei, the case also names his sister and Presidential Chief of Staff, Karina Milei, who is believed to have arranged the president’s meetings with various actors in the crypto world and facilitated their access to official offices. The investigation also includes Davis; Singaporean businessman Julian Peh (whose real name is reportedly Bao Qihao); and two individuals suspected of acting as local intermediaries, Mauricio Novelli and Manuel Terrones Godoy. The latter two also had crypto‑assets frozen equivalent to $300,000.
“So far, the president has gotten off very lightly. Milei faces no major charges, not because there is no evidence, but because there is a tacit agreement between judges and prosecutors not to investigate him,” says Pedro Biscay, director of the Center for Research and Prevention of Economic Crime (CIPCE). “It has to do with deeply ingrained impunity practices in Argentina that prevent sitting presidents from being convicted.”
For Biscay, although proving fraud is more complex, there is ample evidence that Milei took an interest in a business that was not his own, which would constitute the crime of engaging in negotiations incompatible with public office. “Elsewhere in the world, a case like this would be resolved within a year,” he says.
The two initiatives launched by Milei himself to contain the scandal yielded no meaningful information. Last May, through a simple decree, Milei dissolved the special unit he had created to investigate the $Libra case, without releasing any report or results of its work, arguing that it had “completed” its task.
The Anti‑Corruption Office (OA) — which Milei also instructed to “intervene immediately” after the scandal broke — cleared him in June. This office, which reports to the government itself and is headed by an ally of Justice Minister Mariano Cúneo Libarona, concluded that Milei “did not violate the Public Ethics Law” and that his post, made “through his personal account,” should be interpreted as an “individual or private act of communication that did not generate any official policy direction.” In other words, Milei did not tweet in his capacity as president.
In contrast, an investigative committee created by the Argentine Congress to examine the alleged fraud — driven mainly by lawmakers opposed to Milei’s party La Libertad Avanza — determined that the president “may have provided indispensable collaboration for the execution of the scheme,” using his “presidential authority.” Even so, the proposal to launch impeachment proceedings against Milei for possible “misconduct” has no chance of advancing in Congress, especially after the midterm elections, which strengthened Milei’s position.
The case is also being investigated in the United States following a class‑action lawsuit filed by victims in New York courts. That complaint targets Davis directly and leaves Milei aside in order to focus on securing financial compensation and to avoid litigation involving a foreign government, which could slow the process. However, it does highlight the president’s key role and leaves the door open to potential future claims.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition
