Within Argentina’s judicial system, it is said that federal prosecutor Eduardo Taiano is in shock. The claim is impossible to verify, but understandable – he has in his hands documents that could seriously implicate President Javier Milei in the ‘$LIBRA’ crypto token saga.
Taiano, the federal prosecutor leading the investigation, was thrust back into the eye of the storm on Friday after it emerged that lobbyist and entrepreneur Mauricio Novelli – the intermediary between the cryptocurrency’s promoters and the Casa Rosada – shared at least eight calls with President Milei in the moments before and after the head of state promoted the memecoin’s launch on his personal social media account on X on February 14, 2024.
The token surged exponentially after Milei’s tweet, but its creators later withdrew the funds and the price collapsed in an alleged ‘rug pull’ scandal, leaving thousands of victims out of pocket.
The information about the calls comes from forensic examinations carried out by computer experts from the Public Prosecutor’s Office on Novelli’s personal mobile phone. The lobbyist’s devices – phones, computers and hard drives – have been in the hands of the courts since March 2025, one year ago.
According to accounts of the investigation, Taiano endured notable delays in progressing: first in making Novelli’s devices available to the Technological Support Directorate and uploading their contents to the court’s case-management system, so that the parties could access them.
The revelations about the intense number of exchanges between Milei and Novelli – and also between Novelli and Presidential Chief-of-Staff Karina Milei, the President's sister – on the day of $LIBRA’s launch is significant because it undermines the head of state’s main line of defence of his behaviour in the scandal. He said in the aftermath that, as on other occasions, he simply chose on that day to support a private project that appeared to be beneficial to Argentina and posted a tweet to support it, without having any personal connection to it.
That’s not all. On Saturday afternoon it emerged that notes stored on Novelli’s phone mention an alleged agreement with Hayden Davis, the US businessman who launched $LIBRA, for the payment of US$5 million – in several instalments – in exchange for Milei’s support for the initiative.
According to reporting published Saturday by journalists Hugo Alconada Mon and Ignacio Grimaldi in La Nación, which obtained a copy of the document, Novelli’s note was written between “late October and late November 2024” – in other words, at least two months before the post in which Milei promoted the memecoin.
Novelli’s notes give coherence to a chain of events that have been revealed by the press alongside the judicial investigation. These include Davis’ presence at the Casa Rosada on January 30, 2024 for a meeting, and the signing of a confidential agreement under which Davis would become an adviser to the President on crypto-assets.
Davis, who had already boasted in private chats of having “control” over Milei and his sister, posted a photograph of his meeting that day with the President in his office, both giving the thumbs-up.
Another of Novelli’s notes shows what appears to be an outline of the message Milei eventually posted on X two days after promoting the cryptocurrency, in which he distanced himself from Davis’ project and accused the opposition of slurring him.
Milei is being investigated by the courts for alleged offences including abuse of authority, fraud, influence-peddling and bribery. The President and his sister were also mentioned in a civil case in New York as possible beneficiaries of the funds.
Meanwhile, an investigative commission from the lower house Chamber of Deputies concluded that the President provided “essential collaboration” in an international crypto fraud and recommended that Congress assess whether Milei committed misconduct in office, a move that could open the door to impeachment proceedings.
Novelli’s notes do not prove that Milei accepted the agreement, that he signed it or that he received any money. But it adds an element into the case that, for the first time, strengthens the bribery hypothesis.
Even so, the financial amount mentioned by Novelli is beside the point. If the agreement referred to in the note on his phone had already been drawn up in October or November 2024, the President’s claim of ignorance not only comes into question – it collapses entirely.
Since late January, coinciding with the conclusions of the court-appointed experts’ report in the $LIBRA case, Milei has shifted his rhetoric. In the context of trade liberalisation, he has targeted two of the country’s leading businessmen, accusing them of benefiting for years from a system of state privileges. In his speech opening the ordinary sessions of Congress, he repeatedly attacked the opposition and Kirchnerismo, which he portrays as the organiser of a corrupt network.
Since then, Milei has continued to fuel that confrontation. Never before has he spoken so much about corruption. He has introduced a distinctly “moral” dimension into the rhetoric of his administration.
At a moment when confidence indicators in the government are falling, the $LIBRA scandal can only continue to escalate. Someone should advise the President to offer convincing clear, convincing explanations for an episode that is looking increasingly dark.
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