‘La ruta del dinero Karina’? Probing the reports of dirty Milei money

In early 2019, Javier Milei made a drastic decision. Like everything happening since one of his four-legged "sons" had died just over a year earlier, it had not been premeditated. Nevertheless, it had reached the point where Javier had to do something. His flat in Abasto, Buenos Aires, had become too small for his pets, the five English mastiff clones weighing up to 100 kilos, which he had obtained from a United States laboratory after cloning his dead dog. Milei decided to knock down a room, a bathroom and the kitchen, transforming his home into one big living-room for the animals. From then on, Javier began to live in a house without an oven or any means of preparing food. His younger sister, Karina, took charge of putting the food on the table, literally delivering his meals on an almost daily basis.

The first step towards disentangling the international $LIBRA scandal, in which the President became involved in via cryptocurrency promotion, is not to analyse it as just a political episode or even an act for presumed economic gain. The starting-point for any analysis must be an attempt to understand the younger sibling’s total control over the President. Not only did Karina take charge of delivering his meals, at one point – according to journalist Victoria de Masi, who has written a book about her –  she even “cut up his food.” Karina manages, with monopolistic power, aspects which any average adult would work out for themselves. One of them – the most important right now with the government undergoing the worst crisis of this administration – is the money.

‘El Jefe’

Javier calls Karina ‘El Jefe,’ the boss. “She crunches my numbers, historically, and when I spend too long in politics, she says to me: ‘The numbers do not add up, go out and do some work giving lectures,’ or in other words ‘Stop mucking around because the fun’s over.’” That was how he explained their relationship in June 2022, in conversation with his then-favourite television hostess Viviana Canosa. 

The phrases sum up what was going on with Milei when he served as a national deputy, although this dynamic goes much further back. Even before entering politics, when he was just a marginal economist appearing now and again in the media, it was Karina who managed his money and who, for example, took charge of paying for his apartment expenses.

Milei, the specialist in “growth with or without money,” was never good at controlling his own, ironically enough. One of the few known friends he had back then supplies an additional detail: that his sister, who in those times was finding it difficult to make ends meet selling cakes, filched 10 percent of what her brother earned – what Moses (as he named her) would call a “tithe.” It would seem that everything which happened afterwards was nothing more than a story, repeated again and again.

The latest chapter of the novel is $LIBRA, the controversial cryptocurrency token. On  Friday evening, February 14, at 7.01pm, Milei published a tweet, which he shared via his X account and on Instagram, declaring: “A Liberal Argentina is growing. This private project is dedicated to growth incentives for the Argentine economy, funding small Argentine enterprises. The world wants to invest in Argentina.” He also attached the contract number (a kind of CBU for cryptocurrency) and the link to the project, while pinning (i.e. highlighting) the tweet in his X account. It was the first time he had done so with a post since becoming President.

Five hours later, the President deleted the posts, assuring that he “was not informed as to the details” of the project while denying “any link” with it. Between both publications, the biggest earthquake of his administration occurred – a tiny group of people, apparently thanks to privileged information, earned somewhere between US$90 million and US$180 million, while the rest – calculated to number anywhere from 40,000 to 70,000 people (the President himself admitted to at least 5,000) – lost almost everything they staked.

The scandal is not only the money lost by some and gained by others. It is also, as rapidly demonstrated counter to what Milei assures, that he was indeed  “informed” about the matter. Photos appeared showing him appearing together with two promoters of the cryptocurrency: Hayden Davis of the United States (on January 30, a tweet posted by the libertarian himself, while telling how this youngster of 28 had advised him on “blockchain technology and artificial intelligence”) and Singaporean entrepreneur Julian Peh (October 19 at a Hotel Libertador salon, while on December 7 Milei retweeted him, thus permitting him to raise the price of one of his assets by some 20 percent). 

The link with the government was also demonstrated after the scandal by Davis himself. In an interview he granted in the United States on February 16, he anticipated what Milei would be saying the following day. A message which La Nación journalist Hugo Alconada Mon had sent him via his mobile telephone, seeking an interview, was also leaked to the social networks via an account associated with Santiago Caputo, Milei’s top spin doctor and presidential advisor.

The episode, which has already entered courtrooms in both Argentina and the United States, again places a focus on an issue which Noticias has been investigating for some time in a series of articles: the shady financial accounts of the Milei siblings. 

One question springs to mind immediately: did the President or his entourage collect money for promoting $LIBRA? There are various reasons to think they did. 

The first is the coordination: Milei published his tweet just three minutes after the $LIBRA was created, without which action the cryptocurrency would not have been worth a single cent. Not only that but he pinned the tweet for five hours, something he had never done before while President, and that, according to several influencers who make money out of promoting digital assets, is a common step in this kind of business.

In the interviews Davis gave, he spoke of an “agreement,” which he said he had “documented.” It consisted of three steps: that first tweet, another which would include a video of the libertarian and a third in which relevant figures would also broadcast it. There was partial compliance with the last step since – before Milei backtracked – figures such as Lilia Lemoine, Martín Menem, José Luis Espert and Agustín Laje, among others, all shared the post in their accounts. According to CoinDesk, the crypto sector’s most prestigious site, Davis assured in a private conversations that he had paid off Karina Milei, stating he controlled “that nigga” (in reference to President Milei). The veracity of those messages were later denied by his spokesperson via the same site.

A presumed kickback trail was also voiced by Diógenes Casares, the son of Wenceslao, one of the most famous cryptocurrency entrepreneurs in the world. Diógenes relates that he had been notified in advance that $Libra was on the way and that he also knew that “somebody” in Milei’s entourage had picked up US$5 million for the promotion. Who could that be? Could that “somebody” be anybody other than Karina? This was revealed by elDiarioAR journalist Alejandro Bercovich, who published the draft of a contract drawn up by Davis’ legal team linking him to the Mileis.

The dirty money in this scandal also resurfaced later, via another authorised voice in the tech world, US businessman Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of Ethereum, the second-most famous virtual currency in the world after Bitcoin. According to Hoskinson – who declares himself to be an admirer of Milei – “people” close to the President asked him for “something” (he made a gesture of rustling banknotes) in exchange for a meeting with the President. 

As we will learn, this is an old modus operandi of La Libertad Avanza (LLA).

Shady

Augusto Grinner is an influencer known as “De Peroncho” online. He was part of the line that founded the libertarian movement and is a personal advisor of Milei. Grinner says that in 2022, he had warned Milei that a man named Carlos Kikuchi – then an operator and the right-hand man of Karina Milei – had been asking for money from businessmen in Santa Fe and Tucumán in order to set up “meetings.” Milei, in chats to which Noticias had access, answered that Grinner that the rumour was “gossip.” He sent him to talk to “Kary.”

Later that year, another important operator wished to organise a meeting with a businessman, writing to Karina. “I don’t know if you know that these dinners require payment, otherwise Javier will not go,” answered his sister on November 7, 2022 at 9.37pm in a chat to which Noticias had access. Juan Carlos Pallarols,  the famous goldsmith, tells of an identical situation in 2023: what happens when you invite Milei to dinner. “Javier told me: ‘Talk to Karina, she runs my diary.’ I talk to Karina and she tells me: 'Beforehand you must deposit US$2,000 to me in an account,’ giving me the number.”

This practice did not stop when the Mileis reached the Presidency. Last October, Carlos Pagni revealed in La Nación report that Karina and Santiago Caputo had started to “organise meetings to which different business sectors were invited and asked for money in exchange for a receipt." This was money over the counter to finance a foundation.”

An overwhelming amount of testimony points to the same operation: of collecting large sums in exchange for a meeting with Milei. It is not only scandalous for what it shows but also for what it hides. During that time, the libertarian – who by then had moved to a gated community house in Benavídez, Buenos Aires Province, costing a monthly US$2,000 – ran a publicity campaign that saw him donating his monthly salary as a deputy to a member of the public, an initiative designed to boost and celebrate his grassroots support. 

Was this just demagogic, while the Mileis were taking money on the side? This is a serious issue because it is also something widely practised by the “caste.” The  libertarian politician could have invoiced those meetings thanks to his position as a deputy and a presidential candidate – i.e. exploiting the privileges of being a politician while denouncing politicians and giving away his salary. And that's without going into what it signifies legally since that money from private meetings was never declared nor figured in his sworn statements.

All these operations, extracting money via meetings, do not form the only dark chapter in this history. The other is the promotion of digital assets, which normally ended up just as badly as $LIBRA. While serving as deputy, via his Instagram bio, Milei was promoting CoinX, a cryptocurrency of dubious reputation which also ended up collapsing and which caused his fans who had invested on his recommendation to lose money.

In an interview with Ernesto Tenembaum, the libertarian admitted to having collected over US$10,000 for that promotion, while assuring that he himself had not invested. This opens up another door leading to the present: Milei came to CoinX thanks to Mauricio Novelli, one of his sponsors from 2020 through to his presidency. As told by one of the La Libertad Avanza founders, Milei collected around US$3,000 monthly for promoting N&W Professional Traders, a Novelli business based on courses on “professional trading” and cryptocurrency. Milei was one of those professors, and, as later retold by the influencer Emannuel Dannan, it was the libertarian who introduced Agustín Laje and himself to this school.

Novelli also paid Milei in 2022 to sponsor a cryptocurrency called $VULC, which suffered the same fate as the others. Off the record, a LLA deputy who is also well-known in the cryptocurrency world tells how much Karina insisted on also sponsoring N&W in exchange for a convenient payment, something the source rejected due to the low reputation of the businessman and the place. Novelli has again become central nowadays for bringing Davis and Julian Peh together with Milei, as appears in the Casa Rosada’s register of official visits. Novelli is a person closely linked to Karina Milei – and all roads lead to the cashier.

There is also another modus operandi of La Libertad Avanza fundraising: the sale of candidacies, something which happened in 2021 and 2023. In the first campaign rumours swirled that Ramiro Marra, who was running for City legislator, had placed US$500,000 directly into the pockets of the Mileis. Gastón Alberdi, a descendant of the father of the Constitution and a libertarian candidate in that election, swears that Marra told him it was actually US$2 million.

In 2023 the system went nationwide – sales of gubernatorial, mayoral and parliamentary candidacies were all denounced. All who complained about this system were militants for Milei who had been displaced, according to them, because somebody put in money and brushed them aside. Businessman Juan Carlos Blumberg claimed to have been asked for US$50,000 to be a candidate. Silvina Soria of Avellaneda spoke of US$60,000. Ditto Martín Urionagüena in Tigre and Martín Piccato in Chaco.

In Mar del Plata, María Laura Montenegro assured that it had cost her US$30,000 to stand while Liliana Salinas in Entre Ríos, spoke of “US$10,000 to US$40,000.” Carlos Eguía, a candidate in Neuquén, said that Karina had asked him for part of the contract collected by libertarian advisors in the provincial legislature. All this was denounced in court. The investigation was shelved by federal prosecutor Ramiro González last March.

The curious thing about all these cases is that it is difficult to think that it was money to finance the La Libertad Avanza campaign, which was austere in the extreme. The libertarian candidate did not, in fact, cover most provinces on tour. There was little ground game. The money went somewhere else. 

The mystery of the dirty money of the Milei siblings continues to grow.

* This article was originally published by Noticias magazine.