In the lawsuit looking into the launch and subsequent collapse of the $LIBRA cryptocurrency, Federal Judge Marcelo Martínez De Giorgi on Friday dismissed the allegations against President Javier Milei, Presidential Chief of Staff Karina Milei, and nine other defendants. The judge concluded that the events in question did not align with the legal criteria for a criminal offence, issuing a ruling consistent with the request put forth by prosecutor Eduardo Taiano. The crypto scandal erupted in early 2025 when the Argentine president promoted a token that subsequently plummeted within hours, resulting in substantial losses for thousands of investors, amounting to millions of dollars. Developers of LIBRA allegedly withdrew around US$100 million from the project during this period, prompting accusations that the operation was a “pump and dump” scheme, as well as allegations of insider trading.
In addition to the Milei siblings, the judge’s decision encompasses other individuals under investigation, including Argentine crypto entrepreneurs Mauricio Novelli and Manuel Terrones Godoy, as well as Hayden Mark Davis, a United States crypto expert regarded as the principal promoter of $LIBRA. In his ruling, Martínez de Giorgi determined that all defendants should be dismissed from the case, as the prosecutor’s assessment indicated a lack of evidence justifying the continuation of the proceedings. One of the key issues in the case was determining whether the public promotion of LIBRA, its initial price surge and its subsequent collapse, were part of an organised scheme intended to harm buyers. The complaint alleged that a message posted by Milei on his official X account on February 14, 2025, had driven up the token’s price, which rose from an initial value of approximately one cent to nearly five dollars before collapsing.
Allegations suggest that wallets associated with the project’s promoters withdrew approximately US$100 million, resulting in losses for over 40,000 buyers. However, the prosecution contended that an unfavourable financial result was inadequate to demonstrate fraud. Its analysis maintained that it was necessary to demonstrate what the specific deception had been, how it had misled buyers, and how it had prompted their investment decisions. The judge embraced that rationale, observing that the president’s promotion could have substantially impacted the project’s visibility to the public; however, this factor alone did not substantiate the presence of a fraudulent scheme. In this regard, the ruling stated: “The prominence of the person promoting an asset, the public attention surrounding its launch, or the trust their involvement may inspire do not, in themselves, constitute a fraudulent scheme.”
The judge emphasised the importance of determining which specific aspect of the project or its operation had been misrepresented, or what pertinent information had purportedly been concealed. “The mere sequence of events involving the promotion, the increase in the token’s price, and its subsequent decline does not, in itself, demonstrate that this trajectory had been organized in advance for fraudulent purposes,” the ruling stated. The judge referenced a precedent established by the Federal Court of Appeals, which cautioned that the original theory of a coordinated scheme orchestrated from the upper echelons of government had diminished when evaluated against the legal standards for proving fraud.
