A report by the Argentine House of Representatives accuses President Javier Milei of backing and promoting the memecoin project LIBRA, causing losses to more than 114,000 investors.
Argentine President Accused by Congress of Backing the Libra Memecoin Project
The Argentine House of Representatives' investigative committee has just released its final report of more than 200 pages into the collapse of the memecoin LIBRA , alleging that President Javier Milei played a cooperative Vai in promoting and facilitating a fraudulent investment scheme that resulted in heavy losses to more than 114,000 wallets . The report also recommended that Congress XEM the possibility of the President violating his public office in connection with the incident.
Evidence against Javier Milei
- According to the report titled “$LIBRA WAS NOT AN ISOLATED EVENT”, the Investigation Committee believes that the collapse of LIBRA was not only due to management errors, but was a deliberate act to avoid institutional supervision.
- The Commission alleges that President Javier Milei directly promoted LIBRA through his personal X account, describing it as a project to help raise Capital for small businesses in the country.
- However, not long after the post went viral, 8 wallets belonging to the project development team withdrew a total of 107 million USD, causing the Token to lose liquidation and its value to drop almost to 0. Milei then deleted the promotional post, but the damage to investors was extremely heavy.
- The committee concluded that without the President's post, LIBRA would not have been able to achieve such a large scale of purchases and transactions. The report stressed that Milei's actions were not only personal, but also took advantage of his position as President to legitimize a risky project.
- The report also pointed out that the LIBRA case is not the first time the Milei government has indirectly involved itself in problematic cryptocurrency projects. Previously, in December 2024, KIP Protocol, a blockchain project publicly supported by Milei, was withdrawn from liquidation shortly after its launch, causing the Token price to plummet.
- According to on-chain data, Manuel Terrones Godoy, the operator of KIP, converted KIP Token to USDT and transferred them to his associate Mauricio Novelli on the first day of the project's launch.
- The report argues that this chain of events reflects a recurring pattern, where governments or individuals in positions of power appear to provide tacit endorsements to help projects drain liquidation.
- In addition, the Commission also found that President Milei had promoted the Non-Fungible Token game Vulcano developed by Mauricio Novelli and the company CoinX, which was raided by the Argentine judiciary in 2022 to investigate financial fraud.
- The report concludes that these actions make plausible the hypothesis that the authorities deliberately ignored the national financial supervisory agency.
- The case is still under investigation by the Argentine judiciary, while in the US, Burwick Law (New York) has filed a class action lawsuit against Milei and Hayden Davis, the American founders of the Libra project, for allegedly defrauding international investors through the “state-endorsed” Token model.
Milei government response, opposition attack
- In the face of criticism, President Milei denied all accusations, affirming that he has no financial interests or involvement in the LIBRA project.
- The move to disband the internal investigation force set up by the government in May, just days after a court ordered the unfreezing of bank accounts belonging to him and his sister Karina Milei , has raised doubts among the public and the opposition about the transparency of the government.
- During Tuesday’s session, lawmakers from Milei’s La Libertad Avanza party objected to the report’s content, arguing that the opposition did not have enough votes to pass it. However, they did not present a counter-report or alternative explanation. The opposition asserted that the report was important evidence of “a pattern of abuse of power to promote private cryptocurrency projects” and “completely bypassing the national financial approval process.”
- According to Congressman Juan Marino, secretary of the investigation committee, the President's cooperation directly contributed to the LIBRA fraud, emphasizing that the estimated damage from the incident amounted to hundreds of millions of USD, affecting hundreds of thousands of retail investors.
- The LIBRA scandal is not only a big stain on the crypto market, but is also becoming the biggest political crisis of the Milei administration since the beginning of its term. If the allegations in the report are confirmed, the President of Argentina may face formal investigation procedures for abuse of power or aiding and abetting financial fraud, something unprecedented in the country's political history.
- Meanwhile, analysts say the LIBRA case shows the downside of politicizing crypto, when endorsements from high-level leaders can fuel massive speculative cash flows and can easily turn into disasters when confidence collapses.
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